There have been a lot of hard-boiled eggs in my life recently, so here's a (barely embellished) story from my grandmother's life.

You can barely sleep the night before, despite the stifling heat in the upstairs bedroom you share with three of your nine siblings. Quiet does not so much descend over the twin houses on Buttonwood Street that hold and keep your family as it does creep from room to room. The babies sleep first, not understanding the excitement tomorrow will bring. But you can feel it, all coiled into a bubbly balloon in your tummy as you try to find a comfortable position that will help the seashore scenes in your head disappear long enough to sleep. The creaking stairs are silent after your parents have climbed to their room at the front of the house. Your brother and sisters finally cease their breathless whispering, and the trees in the yard even smooth out their leaves and bow their branches in sleep.

The night works its soothing magic and soon your eyes, which don’t remember closing, peek open to the earliest gray strands of dawn. Your mother and aunt are in the kitchen already, preparing the lunches and checking the blankets and towels they packed the night before. They tuck waxed paper around the sandwiches as you sit on the back stairs, sneaking a look around the corner. They work quickly, efficiently, the two sisters who have lived their lives so closely that they don’t need to share a single word to get everything ready. Food is slipped into shoe boxes; none of those expensive meals or snacks that are sold on the train for this family.

Before long the house is swirling with the activity of ten children and four adults. The men and your two oldest brothers are off to work – they have no time for the frivolity of the beach. You think you glimpse a momentary hint of loss in your brother Harvey’s eyes, but then he turns to the door and his responsibility of helping support the family. You’re far too excited to worry about that now, especially since you’re old enough this summer to help care for your littlest sister Amy, still in diapers and a squirmy bundle of sticky hands and drool-sodden bibs.

Too soon the day speeds up and becomes a blur of images – the sooty train with the scratchy horsehair seats, the contents of the shoe boxes being parceled out, cracking and peeling hard-boiled eggs (your secret favorite of the seashore food), the dingy changing building where you don your swimming dress, the freedom of sand under your feet and the salty ocean slapping you in the face, feeling as if the expanse of beach is the one place where you and your family can each have enough room, the pleading for just a little more time as the sun dims. Finally, the ride home where you find yourself in the luxurious position of having your mother and her arms all to yourself for this once, as your eyes try to store up everything from this one day until next year’s day at the beach.