Capeward Bound Travel in Triplicate
Whenever possible, we traveled by car. And we worked to make it easy. My wife, Julie, packed sandwiches and juice to avoid frequent stops; every trip began at night, so our daughter slept instead of getting bored and cranky.
I remember a drive to Ohio when Rebecca was 2, through 11 hours of heavy rain. She awoke as we arrived, looked out at the thick morning fog and yawned. “Cape Cod already?” she asked.
Then we had triplets. Suddenly all travel ended.
It was a painful loss, but a necessary one. Getting through each day with three newborn babies was struggle enough; the thought of actually taking them someplace overnight was paralyzing.
Our friends seemed to agree: Invitations stopped.
Then Julie’s parents did a remarkable thing: They offered to share for the summer their house in Wellfleet, near the end of Cape Cod. It was one of our favorite places.
The triplets were 7 months old, and we had not yet left the neighborhood. We jumped at the offer.
We needed two cars for the 260-mile trek from New York City. Julie and her mother drove in her mom’s Toyota, with the triplets strapped into three infant car seats jammed in the back.
Rebecca—then nearly 4—and I took our Oldsmobile, along with all our stuff: everybody’s clothes, three portable high chairs that fasten onto a tabletop, a dozen baby bottles, nipples and two cases of formula, the first week’s supply of disposable diapers—about 80—and a modest selection of toys. The triplets’ stroller, more than five feet of it, was lashed to the roof.
We left at sundown, hoping all the children would sleep. While the plan was only partly successful with the triplets—Julie later told me they woke up every time she made a rest stop—Rebecca was out by the time we reached the turnpike and never stirred until I cruised through Wellfleet center.
As I lay in bed that night I mused over the ease of the evening’s drive. Maybe I had abandoned my love of the open road too quickly.
Dawn cast a sobering light on my new-found confidence. With four young children, three of them not yet able to walk, what exactly would occupy two months of vacation?
The babies were too young for Wellfleet’s famous array of art galleries, too numerous and unwieldly for whale-watching cruises or sightseeing in the crunch of Provincetown.
Even the most simple of Cape Cod’s charms were closed to us.
The ocean was out, along with nearly seven miles of majestic beach. That beach was too far from any of the parking lots for us to easily transport three infants and everything that went with them. If we could somehow reach the sand, there was no shade, and no umbrella was big enough to protect our scramblers.
And the water, so inviting on hot days, was always cold and frequently whipped wild by the strong Atlantic winds.
At its narrowest, Wellfleet had less than a mile of land between its Atlantic side and Cape Cod Bay, so water was everywhere. But while its bay beaches offered more gentle winds and calmer water, they were just as removed from parking and as unshielded from the sun as beaches on the ocean.
Fortunately, that part of the peninsula offered a third option: ponds. Many were on private land and others lay hidden in the middle of thick woods, making them equally inaccessible. But three of these freshwater sites—Long Pond, Great Pond and Gull Pond—were within convenient reach of main roads and open to visitors for the price of a parking sticker, issued by the town at $25 for a week or $75 for the entire season.
Long Pond was less than four miles away. We had made our choice. It was also one of the more popular ponds, and we were cautioned to go early. But we dared not try before lunch.
Mealtime for the triplets was a chaotic endeavor that featured the three of them belted into their seats at the kitchen table, being spoon fed various forms of pureed foods. About then they were also learning to feed themselves, taking small-cut pieces of melon and bread and mushing them into their mouths ... and their hair and their ears. It was an operation unsuited for public display.
But once lunch and its cleanup were accomplished, it was time for the pond.
We loaded the triplets into the infant seats (now in the back seat of the Olds) and stowed in the trunk the blanket, towels, food, baby bottles, sand toys, sunbonnets and caps, sunscreen, bug and tick repellent and assorted miscellany. My inflated two-man boat was tied to the roof. Julie and Rebecca rode with me in the front seat.
When we reached the pond we found the best parking spaces—those just off the road, and close to shade and the water—were all taken. (Long Pond’s popularity was not exaggerated.) The designated parking area also was at least 50 yards away, too long a haul. So, with the babies quiet, I decided to wait for someone to give up one of the more favorable spots for a lunch-time break.
As I sat there in my 11-year-old sedan, crammed to the roof and above with the apparatus of family life, I looked around at the scene—other parents and their children, their folding chairs and Styrofoam ice chests, their colored beach balls and air-filled monsters capable of keeping from one to four youngsters afloat—and recalled a time when my presence at such a place was unthinkable.
I had spent my younger years driving roadsters and pursuing the perfect stretch of empty beach. Even when Julie and I had brought Rebecca to the Cape in the past it was only in May and October, before and after “the season.” And on those trips I had always found time to walk the beach late at night, to listen to the pounding surf and search the sky for shooting stars.
I was about to share my thoughts with Julie when a red Subaru station wagon backed out of the ideal spot. I pulled in without comment.
Julie stayed with the babies while Rebecca and I spread our blanket at a point safely back from the water and well shaded. Then the shuttle began.
Jacob was the first; Julie unbelted him and handed him to me. The biggest of the triplets, he was for his first year the least mobile and therefore the most likely to remain on or at least near the blanket. I deposited him and hurried back to the car. Julie had already freed Matthew. She handed him to me, then lifted out Alexandra and followed me to where Jake sat transfixed, staring around at the trees and the people.
Midway through my unloading of the towels and toys and bottles of juice I became convinced that we had made the right choice. The bright June sun was efficiently blocked by pine branches but still warmed the ground and, I could tell by the gang of kids in the pond, the water. The pond itself was large enough to entice small sailboats, kayaks and canoes but barred to powerboats. The natural growth of the bottom had been cleared near the beach, leaving a shallow area of clean sand, so the children could play near the shore.
And everything was close. From where we sat, we could easily keep an eye on Rebecca’s efforts to build a sandcastle while we tended the babies.
This was their first real exposure to the outdoors, and they loved it. They discovered pine cones, and tried to eat them. They discovered other babies, and set out in their direction. And they discovered my boat, 6 1/2 feet long, in gleaming gray and blue vinyl, and inflated with every cubic centimeter of air my aching lungs could produce. They climbed in. They climbed out. They rolled over one another with glee at finding something on their scale and soft enough to fall into without getting hurt.
Nobody was interested in trying it in the water, but on land it was a hit.
Just as they had in the city, the triplets drew attention at the pond. But on Cape Cod that attention brought assistance. Offers of help were tendered when we were unloading or loading the car, and when one or two babies needed to be entertained as a third was being put down for a nap. And in the weeks to come, when I had to return to the city for work, Julie managed more easily because our family had been adopted by Long Pond.
“I told my kids,” one woman said as she rocked Alexandra, “If you see that triplet mother needing help, you offer hands.
“Can I do any less?”
By the end of that first week, a cadre of young girls—teenagers and younger—hovered each day around our blanket, eager for a chance to make a baby smile or fetch a discarded toy.
But for Rebecca, the constant celebrity was frequently a problem. Not only was she being ignored in favor of the triplets, the snub came from “big girls,” the one group she most longed to join.
One afternoon, when life at the blanket was particularly frenzied, Rebecca got very quiet. I coaxed her into the water. She brightened up, but her expression became cloudy whenever she caught sight of the adoring gathering back on shore. “I’m jealous,” she said to me. We talked about it, as we had before, but that did not help much.
Only when a little girl approached her and offered to share her long, green, floating alligator did Rebecca shake her mood. She went off splashing with her new friend, and never looked back.
Kids like that little girl seemed to materialize whenever one was needed. They became part of the unofficial sisterhood that made our time at Long Pond possible, turning those daily visits into the focus of the summer.
The pond gave our first vacation with the triplets structure, and permitted us to turn our attention to other family members.
We took Rebecca to a carnival in Provincetown, while Julie’s parents sat with the babies. She rode the dodge ‘em cars and the ferris wheel, and rolled around in a giant tank filled with thousands of brightly colored, light-plastic balls.
Several times Julie and Rebecca got off by themselves, to check out books from the town library and sample some of the nature walks run by the National Seashore.
Rebecca and I managed to get to the ocean. We flew our kite in the gusty winds of Newcomb Hollow, and buried first one of us and then the other in the sand.
And once or twice, after the babies and Rebecca were asleep, when dinner was finished and the dishes washed, after Julie ended a day that began at 5 a.m., I stole off to the beach alone, to listen to the pounding surf and search the sky for shooting stars.
Next summer, if all goes well, Julie and I may even go out to dinner.