February is brutal. February is a test of character, so buck up! February is just same as it ever was. February is glorious! Which kind of Vashonite are you?
We have friends with a beach house, and they offered it to us for a mini-retreat. It was an act of pity; we seemed moldy and despondent. OK, that was just me, but I was pathetic enough for the whole family to benefit.
I may have perhaps made a mistake in suggesting that our mini-retreat could include chaperoning a five-girl sleepover. Yes, it’s safe to say that was a dubious call.
Said sleepover included a shameful lack of vegetables at dinner, a long, incomprehensible charade-like game of skits (during which I had a flash insight that my career had me stuck as a perpetual 11-year-old), submitting to a full-on facial makeover and incessant yammering and laughing until 1 a.m. Don’t tell the other parents.
But come on, it’s February, and winter break to boot! We all needed to kick back a bit. Maybe it’s because I’m a professional buffoon, but my kicking back meant I was suddenly in a Steve Martin movie.
Around 9 p.m., we realized we should bring our dogs over, since they’d never slept in the house alone, and we’re from Vashon, where that kind of pet treatment is a felony. I’ve written about my dogs before — a wildly neurotic Border Collie and a wildly stupid Great Dane. They were fit to be tied and leapt into the car with a vengeance.
I lovingly refer to the Dane as the Marauding Village Idiot on Crack. As such, he’s simply not meant to visit a lovely, Pottery Barn-ish beach cottage. That isn’t ours.
In addition to being destructively affectionate, he’s skittish — a combination that, in humans, commonly requires institutionalization. Somehow, he decided the front door of the beach house was evil and wouldn’t enter.
The border collie, of course, entered and returned, was told to go away, did so sheepishly, then returned and laid down under me, as I’m trying to force the 105-pound canine toddler monster into the house.
The Dane became a massive snake paperweight, lodged into the corner of the front entrance. There was no calming him down, as he was possessed by paranoid delusions that only he could see and whimper about. In an act of kindness and authority, I hoisted and heaved him into the bedroom and onto his waiting dog bed.
A February squall was inundating the entrance way. I returned to close the front door and for some reason decided to put all the kids shoes outside, like that would keep everything dry. The shoes all got soaked, and in the morning when the sitter came to get two of the girls, I got the major stink eye.
I decided the whole dog visit was a bad idea, and they were having a lousy time anyway, so I took them home. They were delighted.
I returned to the beach house and slept in great comfort through the tempest. I dreamt of Hawaii, which is where most of the island has gone this week. That’s what smart people do in February, either because they have money or they save money, both of which sound like wonderful ideas.
They don’t mean to gloat when they tell you, but to the moldy and despondent, it can’t help but feel like gloating. “Yeah, we got a private house on the beach with a swimming pool!” When I ask if that isn’t redundant, I sound bitter. Then I smile and wish them an awesome vacation, and they laugh, toss their hair, and skip away.
It’s noon now, we’ve been here all morning. The girls are watching Hitchcock (only on Vashon, only in February), and I sit staring out at buoys, buffleheads and gusts of rain creating myriad undulating designs on the Sound.
The truth is, February is poetic. It’s the dark time, but it brings out the best, and the beast, in all of us. Wild sleepovers, the absurdness of pets, and water, water, everywhere. Got gratitude?
Hey, don’t tell the beach house owners about all this. I’m pretty sure dogs aren’t allowed.
— Kevin Joyce is a writer, humorist and father on Vashon.
