It Was a Good Summer
Today is the last day of business for my family’s seasonal restaurant, Cabbage Island Clambakes. For 32 years, aunts, uncles, cousins, parents, and siblings have gathered on Cabbage Island to host daily clambakes all summer long. it is a business I have grown up around and proudly joined full time in 2018.
Working with and for your family is both rewarding and challenging at all times. With the end of the season finally here, I can confidently say that there is nothing I would rather spend my time doing than this. Despite the challenges, working with my family has been endlessly rewarding in the form of memories made, and bonds strengthened. There are always moments when each of us questions if we would be happier somewhere else but at the end of the day, we can all agree that the joys are worth the headaches and frustration.
This year brought me so much joy, thanks in part to having my sister and her children with us all summer. Anthony and I spent more time with our niece and nephew than we ever have, and Lindsay and I spent more time together than we have since I left Ohio in 2012. Watching my niece and nephew play in the same cottage my sister and I grew up in warmed my heart in indescribable ways. Spending this much time with Lindsay and her children reminded Anthony and me of how much we also want children. I can hardly wait until we’re chasing our own children around this rock. '
This summer is also special because my gram, Bennie Alice, is turning 100 years old. Despite her age, she worked ever single day this summer in our gift shop and refused to take a day off. She loves meeting our guests, many of whom have been coming for yeras and have fond memories of her over the yeras. It truly is heartwarming to hear people talk about your grandmother in such sweet and endearing terms. Today was a difficult day for her because she will no longer have hundreds of people visiting her each week, until next summer. We brought her down to the docks this afternoon to wave goodbye to the last boat of the season and as all 125 guests sang “Happy Birthday” to her, there wasn’t a dry eye in sight. In a few day, gram will celebrate her 100th birthday with her children and most of her grandchildren. I’ll be driving her to town by boat and that might be the biggest on of my life.
With the end of this season, comes the beginning of another. Soon, Anthony and I will be back in our house and the rest of the family will have gone home as well. We’ll see each other again through the fall and winter but nothing will compare to the time we spent together this summer. But just like the coming and going of the tides around here, summer will again return and with it, all the fun and love that I and my family have come to know through the years. It is a feeling, warm and fortifying enough, to last the whole year long.
