Habits Flying

September 7, 1969

Hurricane Gerda

I came home from school to an empty house, threw on some jeans and a sweater, and hurried down the two blocks to the beach to see the storm that was barreling its way up the East Coast. I was thirteen. Living on the Jersey shore in the late 1960s gave me the opportunity  to learn about diversity, perseverance, and the dangerous beauty of raw nature.

Time was running out, I had to beat the storm. Hurrying down my front steps I turned left, past the Martignetti’s big discolored boarding house, a couple of empty fraternity houses, closed up for the season, and ‘Jerry Lynches’, the big Irish bar with the long covered front porch.  

The Duffy’s lived in the yellow three story Victorian on the next corner, big enough to house their family of ten kids by using the attic as a bunk room for the older boys.  There were a couple of empty lots on either side of the other Irish bar on our side of the street and I had to step carefully to avoid any glass broken from the night before. Belmar was a party town and I was barefoot.

We were barefoot all summer long and we stretched it out as long as we could.  By walking barefoot you learn it’s wiser to step lightly on the ball of your foot to protect from the painful mistake of stepping on a tiny stone or worse, with your heel.

It was off season, late September, and the tourists were no longer cruising up and down Ocean Avenue.  “The Benny’s” were gone. A nickname, created long before me, used for the New Yorkers who clogged our streets all summer long. We had the town back to ourselves so it was easy to run across the usually busy street and up the three steps to the boardwalk.

The boardwalk at that time was still made of wood, and there’s a certain way to walk on the boards to avoid getting a splinter.  You’ve got to walk against the grain and not with it.  Step softly, and you eventually learn to walk with some confidence. 

My father was the one to go to if you had a splinter. He’d get out the tweezers, a needle and a match.  I’d have to look away as he burned the end of the needle to sterilize it . He’d do a bit of light surgery and then cover it with his black salve to suck out anything left behind. A mere splinter never persuaded me to wear shoes.

I could have walked further down the boardwalk that day to use the ramp down to the sand. It offered a slight bounce with each step, making that familiar springy, squeaky sound of wood against wood. Instead, I planted both hands shoulder width apart on the four-foot high fence that lined the beach-side of the boardwalk, pushed myself up until my arms were straight, threw one leg over to the right and the other leg over to the left and  jumped down about six feet to the soft sand.  

Belmar wasn’t a free beach, you needed a badge during the summer tourist season.  Every year my mother made it clear that we each got one $6 season pass and we were supposed to take care of it. Inevitably, I would lose my badge within the first two weeks. I had to jump that fence and quickly disappear under the boards until I thought the coast was clear from the roaming boardwalk cops, most of whom were our public school teachers in need of a summer job.  

I loved to jump that fence and I loved to walk in that hot sand. It’s not easy really, the strength it takes to walk on the soft sand makes your body wriggle with an unnatural gait, though it’s a great way to tone your legs, and everything else.  

Just before I reached the waters edge I found a soft spot to make myself a seat. I dug my toes deep into the sand, and let it smooth my heels. The sand connected me to the earth, and kept my feet warm. I felt I was in a safe place to watch natures show. 

The oceans’ white foam and churning waves, crashing, created fine soft sand with tiny little shells on our beach.  The clouds overhead made the sky fierce, heavy and menacing.  The skies were that combination of grey and glaring white that makes you squint. Mists of salt water settled on my face and created ringlets in my hair. I sat alone in the wind listening to, and feeling part of, the raw nature around me. I was surrounded by the roaring winds, wrapped in my own arms, my hair whipping about my face.  I love how the beach makes you feel so alive and slightly vulnerable during volatile weather. I had the sense of sitting on the very edge of the earth, feeling it was just a bit dangerous, my heart beating quicker than usual. 

That day I went to the beach to see the power of Mother Nature, but what I found was what I now think of as religion, human nature at its best.  I witnessed an image that reminds me still of a faith I do not have.

Two young nuns struggled to walk across the deep sand in the whipping wind. Arm-in-arm, they leaned into the gusts, walked out to the waters edge slowly and carefully gathering their long black habits trying to keep them from getting wet in the crashing surf. Together they climbed the rocks of the jetty that were piled high to stop the waves from crashing and destroying our shoreline. They kneeled, facing the ever growing fierce waves and prayed to their god.

As I watched them, a profound sense of calmness came over me. The seagulls screaming and diving overhead announcing the approaching storm. The nuns knelt praying to a god who had created this beauty in the guise of such extreme danger. Asking for mercy while facing a vicious storm on its way to our shore the nuns endured. I see their habits flying, hands folded in prayer.  It’s an image that I can conjure up at any moment.  To me these women represent commitment, dedication, and faith, undying and lifelong. 

I don’t share their religion, but that day they shared theirs with me.