Why Do We Do This?

When I tell people about the Dunnevant Family Beach Week, I often get this question...Have you taken leave of your senses? To be fair, this is not an entirely inappropriate question. Cramming 19 family members into a single beach house for seven days, for many, would be considered a violation of the Eight Amendment to the Consitution and it’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Indeed, there are times when the experience does test one’s patience. My comeback to this challenging question has always been a garbled, tortured mess, since it is sometimes hard to put into words the particular charms of this event.

Pictures help.

The first morning of the week I walked out onto the deck to drink my coffee and there was my niece, Darcy. I remember her first year when she was just a baby. Now here she was, a newly minted teenager, up before me, reading a book. Seems like two weeks ago we were all holding her in our laps reading her books.

Family vacations offer rare opportunities for generational interaction. My nephew, Bennett, is enthralled with my son’s video game playing skills. If Patrick is annoyed by his hovering, it doesn’t show. This is the sort of photograph that the two of them will look at years after I’m gone and smile at the memory.

...A rare gathering of the six of us under the same roof, rarer still since this is one of the only times all week where we all are fully clothed and free of sweat, sand and suntan lotion.

A quick side trip to Manteo to reenact Jon’s proposal to my daughter 5 years ago. It was in this exact spot, I’m told. I will resist any reference to how criminals always eventually return to the scene of the crime. Oops...

The women of the family, sunglasses fashionably in place, smiling for the camera on the top of the dunes at Jockeys Ridge. Evelyn, the youngest, already displaying advanced workin’ it skills. This, another photograph that will elicit many fond sighs for years to come. Aww, do you remember how gorgeous it was that night yau’ll?

This tradition, now in it’s 16th attempt, is a historical marker of sorts. Each year is compared to the one before. The locations change, the houses change, the experiences mount and are archived in our collective memories. Where one’s memory fails, another’s fills in the gaps. Still others just make stuff up...using creative license to help the history along. Soon, history becomes myth, and we delight in it.