The Shell Seekers

A trip to the beach is a treasure hunt to us. Every time, it is so different. You never know what you might uncover. Each of us has a different prize we seek. Charlotte is happy to find any piece of shell that she can fold into her fat, dimpled hand. Carter is attracted to muscle shells these days, particularly treasuring the bivalve shells that are still intact. Will is on a constant hunt for a sea star or sand dollar, but will settle for the discovery of a horseshoe crab. I am more particular and covet a whelk shell. New Jersey's answer to the conch shell, a whelk is hard to find this time of year. Nevertheless, I keep my eyes open as we comb Ocean City's beaches.

Last week, I took the kids to one of Ocean City's beach walks. Every Tuesday and Wednesday in the summer season, the town gives guided tours down beaches in the north and south ends of the island. Last year, we attended one in the south end, at Corson's Inlet State Park. Since then, it has become a frequent destination for us for treasure hunting. This year, we went on the beach tour in the north end, near the Longport Bridge.

If you're interested in really learning about what you regularly see on a New Jersey beach, a beach walk is a great way to do so. Most of the shore towns around here have them. In Ocean City, it costs $1 for an adult, and 50-cents for a child to go on the hour-long tour. The kids get a bucket, too, which adds to the fun. As they deposit sea treasures into their buckets, the guide is able to tell them a little about what they have found.

As often happens, I got a wary eye from the tour guide when I showed up on the beach walk with my three in tow. There were two tour guides, and I heard some debate over who would take "the young ones." As we walked down the beach with the guide, accompanied by another family with slightly older kids, my boys knew all the answers to the questions that the guide asked, identifying different types of crabs, egg sacks and sea shells. With a good knowledge of the sea shore life already, this beach walk was a great way to add more details about stuff they already knew. But, at this point, Will could probably lead the tour himself. We got compliments from the tour guide afterwards, who said the kids were both good and knowledgeable.

The kids and I each picked up important pieces of information during our walk. For Will and Carter, the guide talked about the dangers of litter to both the landscape and wildlife of the beach. The children were just as interested in spotting and picking up pieces of trash as they were sea shells. For me, the guide mentioned that whelk shells have been appearing on some of the beaches on the way to Strathmere. That piqued my interest, for sure.

My friend Jen is also an Ocean City devotee and also in search of a whelk shell. Once I told her of the alleged location of whelks, she loaded her four into her car to go find some, promising me one if she was successful. She wasn't. I also loaded my kids up and scanned the beaches between OC and Strathmere. I made the trip during high tide, and was equally as unsuccessful.

Saturday, while Craig stayed home with a napping Charlotte, the boys and I headed down to Corson's Inlet with two plastic bags--one for shells and one for garbage. The beach was crawling with fellow shell seekers. Our shell bag was soon loaded with our finds--whelk egg cases, bits and pieces of unfortunate spider, sand and green claw crabs, moon snail shells and broken pieces of whelk shells. The beach was scattered with large clam and oyster shells, too, but we have moved beyond those pedestrian, every-day-shells and are on to much bigger and better. Although we still have not found a whole whelk shell, we have some nice pieces of them. And part of the fun is the hunt, anyway.

What left the biggest impression on Will and Carter, however, was the informal beach clean up we conducted. We quickly filled the bag with candy wrappers, empty beer cans, lonely, pairless beach shoes, pieces of latex balloons, a box of cigarettes. Will is a child tightly in tune with the injustices of the world, a cheerleader for the underdog, a tireless fighter for what he believes is right. He would find pieces of litter with an eagle eye and dramatically question, "who would throw their trash on this beach?" as he would toss it into the waiting plastic bag. Corson's Inlet is a state park with a "carry in, carry out" garbage policy. We don't know if the trash we picked up was left there by beach-goers or washed up by the ocean, perhaps a byproduct of the beach replenishment project in Sea Isle, which seems to be churning up a great deal--from seaweed to crabs to trash--onto the shores of Ocean City.

Regardless, we found a sizable amount of trash during our walk, including a torn up piece of tire that Will and Carter worked together to drag down the sea side. A woman passed us and smiled. "Boys and their treasure," she said. I think Will was slightly insulted. He has moved on from finding treasure to leading a one-boy effort to, as he puts it, "save the earth." He is still grieving that I made him leave a washed up pair of furniture cushions on the beach--they were just too much for us to carry.They wanted to take the trash home with us, so they could show their Dad all they collected. I talked them into a photo instead.

Our beach combing will continue as we enjoy this last week of summer. We have different missions now, though. I'm still in search of my whelk shell. Two shells would be ideal--one for me and one for my friend Jen. Will is determined to continue his beach clean up operation, one plastic bag at a time, with his trusty helper, Carter, at his side. Woe be to him who litters in front of Will and Carter. They're working hard to clean up our beaches and take it quite personally.

Moms versus Kids

In the hard-fought battle of mom versus kids, the kids most always win. They have sheer numbers on their side. Plus, a knack for modern technology that we'll never have. And a natural lack of modesty. We're just no match, no matter what we do.

Still, I wake up each day ready to fight again. I never think I'm going to lose, but go to bed each night out run and out smarted. But, I never learn.

Last week, my friend Jen was down in Ocean City with her four kids. After a weekend family get together while the husbands were around, we decided to try it again: seven kids and two moms.

We met at Jen's house, packed lunches, gathered our beach gear, sprayed the kids down with sun screen, loaded our beach bags to the brim and marched the kids to the beach. It was quite an effort to get to the beach, as it always is with kids, but once we got there, the kids had a great time and entertained each other. I actually sat on my beach chair for a full 10 minutes, a never before achieved feat! We made a good team, as we switched off playing lifeguard to the older children playing in the surf and playing watch dog to the young-uns, apt to throw sand at passers by.

The day went swimmingly, and we congratulated ourselves as we left the beach. Not only had we survived, the kids were happy, no one was bleeding, neither of us had had to yell. That's what I call a good day.

So, we kept going. We put the babies down for a nap and let the good times continue with a dip in the pool. The older kids swam all afternoon, stopping now and then for a snack or for a rest in the sun. Again, the kids were happy, no one was bleeding, and still, no yelling.

So, we kept going. The kids were tired, they'd been together all day and it was dinner time. What would any mother with seven kids in her care do? Why, take them to a restaurant, of course!

Most restaurants in Ocean City are very family friend. We choose Uncle Bill's down on 40th Street. I hesitate to give too many details about the restaurant, since I'm not sure that they are still in business after being pelted with the kid storm that we brought in with us.

Jen and I will probably always refer to this as the Ocean City Restaurant Incident of 2009. No one was bad, really, but put seven kids and two moms in a restaurant together, and it is unlikely that anyone will leave unscathed. Two kids spilled their milk, so the floor was soon wet with puddles of chocolate and plain milk, with soggy dinner napkins in the middle of each spill, an unsuccessful attempt to clean up our clumsiness. Four of the kids talked nonstop about different topics interesting only to boys between the ages of 4 and 9. I won't get into details here. If you've ever talked to a 7-year-old boy, you know. Plates were passed back and forth. Straws were traded. They stood up, they sat down. The laughed and laughed. Charlotte screamed to get out of her high chair, so I spent the majority of the meal standing up with her on my hip, eating my hamburger with my free hand.

We attracted some attention from the restaurant hostess. Following our second milk spill and Charlotte's melt down, she can over to see if everything was okay. We smiled and apologized for the mess and the noise. We were doing the best we could. Her eyes quietly scanned our table and her lips pursed into a tight circle. "Oh," she quietly said, and backed away from the table.

It got much worse. Much worse. I'll leave it to your imagination. The restaurant was practically empty, but our waitress was suddenly busy. Very busy. She raced back and forth between the kitchen and her two other tables. I think she was trying to disassociate herself from our table. Maybe she was hoping that we'd pull a "dine and dash." After waiting for 15 minutes for our check, we thought about it. I think they would have let us go without much of a chase if we promised never to come back.

Jen is a very talented photographer and we wanted to follow up our restaurant adventure with a trip to Corson's Inlet to take some photos of the kids. The plan was for her to photograph my kids while I watched hers. We took our clean, fed, happy children to the beach. I expected mine to smile for the camera. I expected hers to sit with me as I kept them engaged with a rousing game of Simon Says.

Needless to say, we left the beach an hour later with seven wet and sandy children. Exhausted, we cleaned them up and got them into their respective cars. "What about dessert?" they questioned. They could have kept going. We were done. Jen got some lovely photos of Charlotte, including the one in this post. Next time, though, I'll rent some models to stand in for my older children.

The day didn't go quite as I expected, but the kids were happy, no one was bleeding, neither of us had to yell--much. I'd call that a good day. Still, I'd chalk up the day as a win for the kids, once again. Kids, 1. Moms, 0. But, a good day nonetheless. You can't win them all.

Seaside Jaunt

When I'm in the mood for a change of scenery from our 24th Street beach, I head south towards Corson's Inlet State Park at 59th and Central Avenue. You can visit it virtually at:

http://www.state.nj.us/dep/parksandforests/parks/corsons.html

If you haven't been, it is worth the trip. The white sands are bordered by grassy dunes, complete with a nature trail. We often sight dolphins jumping through the waves. During July and August, Ocean City leads beach walks in the morning and afternoon here. For $1 per person (and 50-cents for children), you are guided down the beach by a knowledgeable volunteer and he or she points out interesting finds, teaching about the local flora and fauna. Each child gets a beach bucket to help collect seaside treasures. Will especially loved our beach walk last year and we intend on going back again.

Since Corson's Inlet is a state park, it isn't part of the Ocean City beach system and does not have a life guard. It seems to be a popular destination for boating, surfing and fishing. However, our favorite activity at the Inlet is collecting seashells. It is the best beach for finding shells--sparkly jingle shells, curly whelks and, best of all, chunky clam shells, perfect for our made-up "seashell game" and for painting on rainy days.

My friend Suzette and her son were visiting Ocean City. Looking for a reason to get together with the kids, I suggested a trip to the Inlet to find seashells.

We equipped each child with his own plastic bag. But from there, the trip didn't go quite as imagined. I had pictured a happy walk down the shoreline. I'd expected to describe it later with words like "jaunt"" and "frolic." Suzette and I would share knowing smiles as the children amused us with their enthusiasm over their discoveries. The sounds of screeching gulls would be muffled by the giggles of happy children.

As we entered the beach, the children scampered down to the ocean, straight into the waters. The sea is rough here, and the ocean is unguarded, so we kept having to call them in. Now completely wet, they started digging. We weren't prepared for a full out beach day, so digging was done using hands instead of shovels.

Charlotte was not content to be an observer from her seat in the sling. She struggled to get down and I let her. Dressed in a beachy sundress, she soon was soaked from head to toe. After crawling in the sand, she was coated like a piece of Shake-and-Bake chicken. And, after trying to hold her, distract her, clean her, so was I.

"There usually are shells here," I explained to Suzette, "lots of them." She giggled and suggested that maybe we had visited the park right after a clam bake last time.

Soon, we were able to convince the boys to continue our walk down the beach. And eventually, we hit the shell mother load: hundreds of shells in all shapes and sizes. We must have just missed a seagull buffet, as we discovered clam shells probably only recently pried open, both top and bottom shells intact. Our bags were soon full of these treasures. (You'll read later of our many uses of these shells!)

We had driven down to the Inlet and tried to brush off as much sand as we could before driving off. Even my keys were coated. The car will never be the same. But I can't wait to do it again.