.....generations

Yogis,
‘You put your right hand in, you put your right hand out, you put your right hand in and you shake it all about. You do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around…..that’s what it’s all about.’

I am playing the hokey pokey game with my one-year-old grandson in the beach house we rent each year in Stone Harbor NJ. I had been told that he knows it now. My mom, hearing us, comes around the corner and asks us to do it again. Together we go through the verses and once the final round where we put our whole body in and our whole body out is over, we shout hooray and clap for ourselves. ‘It has now been handed down!’ exclaims my mom.

Suddenly I have images of my mom playing it with me and me playing it with my boys. That’s how it works. Generations……..

My husband’s mom grew up spending summers in Stone Harbor. They then brought him, he brought me, and we have taken our sons there every year. We now have four generations sleeping under one roof.

My parents are now great-grandparents to the four children who were there. The older three would scramble up on the couch with them to hear stories and see pictures on my dad’s phone of his army days. Our newest addition was meeting them and Stone Harbor for the first time Each of the kids introduced year after year to traditions handed down from us to our sons who now model the same behaviors……and even seem to take it up a notch.

This week my oldest son taught his oldest son how to ride a boogie board. Stone Harbor is where he and his two brothers learned and spent hours on end practicing their technique, only coming out when lips were blue and fingers wrinkled. Getting their first high quality boogie board was a rite of passage.

‘Fudgie Wudgie!’ yells the teenager pushing the white cart on wheels down the beach containing ice cream sandwiches, good humor bars and drumsticks. As the kids ate with sandy hands, we recounted the history of who used to eat which ones. The screwball (with the gumball in the bottom) a crowd favorite. Fudgie Wudgie has officially been handed down.

The daily digging of the big hole has been handed down. The packing and carrying of the coolers. How to properly put up an umbrella (none of those cheap plastic ones for this family) so there is no chasing it down the beach on a windy day. How to play Rock in Bucket (which involves sitting in beach chairs on the front lawn of small rocks and throwing them into buckets….harder than it sounds) has been handed down. Grandkids learning to reel in the rod when a kingfish hits and becomes our fish fry appetizer.

Each generation teaches and most importantly role models the behaviors to the one below until it sticks. They then have the joy of sitting back and watching the kids teaching it to the grandkids, and if you’re lucky like my parents, the grandkids teaching the great-grandchildren.

Generations……

What if the hokey pokey really is what it’s all about?
SARAH