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BY SALLY FRIEDMAN
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
"Be careful!" Jill commanded as her father and I climbed the semi-daunting outdoor steps of a Long Beach Island stilt house where Jill and her sisters were spending a week with their families this summer. "These stairs are tricky."
The admonition was a perfect metaphor for what could seem a perfectly ordinary caution, but was actually a bit more profound.
Slowly, inexorably, a shift in roles has been taking place. And it boils down to this: increasingly, we're now the led instead of the leaders.
How many summers had I been the one saying "Careful!" countless times to three little beachgoers as they scrambled down steps and ramps and dunes to get to the Atlantic Ocean? How many times was my husband the guide/fearless leader as that ocean was the joyous destination?Throughout a deliciously long visit at a crowded rental beach house with cutesy wall hangings and seashore colors, my husband and I were under the watchful eye of our daughters. It's not that we're feeble. It's just that they are increasingly vigilant about how WE maneuver the world.
The role reversal takes my breath away.
These same daughters who used to toddle behind us, while we carried the buckets and shovels, the rafts, the towels, the umbrellas and sunscreen, now forge ahead insisting that we need not carry "... the heavy stuff."
Huh?
On our recent visit, these three sisters who once seemed incapable of sharing a blouse, let alone a beach house, showed a generosity of spirit – and an amiability – that both stunned and delighted us.
"I never thought I'd live to see this," I whispered to my husband when all three leaped to their feet to clean up from a very messy, noisy lunch that involved seven kids and eight grown-ups.
What came rushing back were the chore charts I used to make at these seashore cottages when there were endless squabbles about whose job it was to clear and stack, and whose it was to sweep. The arguments were noisy and seemingly endless.
Now, our daughters, all mothers, make those charts and attempt to make sure that the three "smalls," Danny, Emily and Carly, get the easy chores while the big kids pitch in with the harder stuff.
And the grandparents?
We're asked to sit out on the deck and enjoy the breezes.
It takes some getting used to.
It's also somewhat bittersweet.
It was just yesterday – or so it seems to us – that we were in full charge, even if that meant very little relaxing on this wonderful island where external change is also everywhere. We're still adjusting to the exponential growth, which we don't like – to the traffic, which we like less – and to the hefty prices for summer rentals.
But the biggest and most deeply personal change is the notion that there's been a seismic generational shift.
My husband and I sat on the beach on a golden summer afternoon and didn't once get up to chase a child on the run or to scan the ocean every third second for the one oldest enough to be swimming with a buddy.
While I never thought I'd miss those unmistakable markers of parenting, I did.
We were invited to dig a huge hole (oops, a cave, we were later told) and to help create a few sand castles, complete with towers made of dripped wet sand. And while it was undeniably harder to get down on the sand – and get up again – we wouldn't have missed it for the world.
We were observers to a spirited game of Frisbee, and a few rounds of touch football as the day waned. But we were definitely not participants.
Where does it go? The "it," of course, is time. And the mystery is its passage.
We felt it keenly on that day at the shore. Not with bitterness. It was rather with a sense of astonishment that in the endless dance of the generations, we had arrived at a new destination.
After a dinner on the deck prepared by the family's premier chef, son-in-law Michael – after watching our grandchildren chase one another around the deck with the boundless energy of the young at the seashore – we rallied ourselves for a departure. Home was just over an hour away – but it felt like another planet.
We walked down those outside steps again, this time by the light of a flashlight that Amy, our middle daughter, insisted upon holding for us.
Then the whole clan stood in the driveway to noisily wave us off.
"Be careful!" someone said as we pulled away.
We smiled at one another, and waved to our protectors as we turned the corner to return to our quiet world.
And yes, we were careful.
Sally Friedman is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, resident of Moorestown, and longtime contributor to local, regional and national publications. The mother of three has seven grandchildren and is the wife of retired New Jersey Superior Court judge Victor Friedman. She can be reached at
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