Vacation

We -- Cassie, Roger, Abby, Joey, Mary Ellen, and me -- had a great two weeks in Garden City Beach. Perfect weather and, near as I could determine, happy to be in one anothers company. Since we've returned, Mary Ellen has been telling people that it was our best beach vacation ever. Maybe. Certainly it was the most relaxing.

Our apartment was on the top (12th) floor, with a balcony overlooking the ocean. I spent a lot of time inside -- the idea of sitting on the beach and dealing with the sand and the wind and the sun wasn't all that appealing to me. Basically, I went down to play in the ocean (with Abby if I was lucky) for half an hour or an hour each day. Abby was very brave in the ocean. She ducked under waves and rode a boogie board for the first time, but one of her favorite activities was dunking her Pop Pop by pushing him over backwards into the waves.

Most of the rest of my time was spent in the apartment. (Or food shopping, which I seem to have done a lot of.) What do you do in an apartment at the beach? Well, if you're lucky, you get to play with your grandson or coddle him while he sleeps. You also get to read. On the balcony. Listening to the ocean. With a glass of beer or wine nearby.

Since retiring, I haven't been reading much. I had pretty much concluded, sadly, that I no longer read books. Well, sir. At the beach I read:

• The Ghost of Monsieur Scarron,
• The Trial of Soren Qvist ,
• Then We Came to the End,
• Netherland,
• Some Day This Pain Will Be Useful to You, and
• the first third or so of The Moviegoer

And it wasn't hard. And it wasn't "Well, there's nothing else to do so I may as well read." It was fun. The two Janet Lewis books (Ghost and Trial) were terrific. That's "terrific," as in "fabulous." As in why didn't I read these books 30 years ago? Then and Netherland, respectively, won last year's Hemingway-PEN and PEN-Faulkner awards; neither was as good as either of the Janet Lewis books, but Then did get me to laugh out loud once and Netherland also had its moments. Some Day is an updated version of Catcher in the Rye. Moviegoer is a book everybody praises to high heaven; I gave up less than half-way through.