Shelter Island. Round two. Last year my girlfriends and I ventured to the isle over Martin Luther King weekend. Elena’s family owns a summer home on Shelter Island and was nice enough to lend it to us for the second time. We had such a wonderful time last year, that this year over President’s weekend Elena, Suzanne, Wesley and I packed and met, bags in hand for our weekend getaway.
After a email chain 38 messages long, we had finally decided when and where to meet, our weekend menu, and who was buying what food. And then we found out, the car we planned to borrow to drive to the island was not available. To get to the island we would have to take the bus. It was a bit more money. It was a bit more inconvenient for the two girls who live in Brooklyn. I pushed hard to roll with the punches.
We all needed the weekend away. We had all blocked off this particular weekend. We had been looking forward to this for a long time. Sometimes, idyllic plans go awry. Factors change. Miscommunications occur. But it would have been a waste to throw away a weekend of friends because of a blip. So we rearranged, took a deep breath, and met under the street lamp of 44th and 3rd to board the Hampton Jitney. It was too important to have this weekend together.
Two and a half hours later we descended the stairs of the bus and paused under the glittering sky. Some things, you just can’t see in the city. The ferry ride from Greenport, Long Island to Shelter Island felt wonderful—leaving the world behind across the glassy water.
After settling in and appropriately watching an episode of Friends we resisted passing out on the couch, strewn across each other, and dragged our butts to our bedrooms.
12pm Saturday morning. Sleeping in is one of G-d’s gifts. Living in an apartment building on the courtyard-facing side on the second floor, I did not realize how wonderful it is to wake by sunlight. Yellow beams streaming through my window in waves across my bed. It just felt so peaceful.
Herein lies the beauty of a weekend away from the city: the tranquility. It necessitates slowing down. Being in New York, my pace is naturally accelerated. There is so much to do and never enough time. Yet, glancing up at the stars, or smelling the wind while gazing at the water, or treading through the sand, there seems not reason to live so fast.
The scenery itself was relaxing. Let alone the fact that our largest priorities were eating delicious food and just spending uninterrupted time with each other. I even resurrected by cooking skills and made a decadent french toast breakfast with a lovely pineapple display.
As we watched the Sex and the City movie (yes we are stereotypical) we ate delicious snacks of wine and cheese, veggies and hummus and chips and salsa. It felt so right: four friends who met in New York watching a movie about four women—all so different—who build a legendary friendship.
We spent time dancing around the kitchen, cooking dinner, and talking in to the late hours of the night.
With weekends like this, full of time spent enjoying each other’s company and confiding in each other, I think (and hope) we’re on that SATC road. My dad’s best friend, my Uncle Gary, advised me on my Bat Mitzvah video, “If you have one true friend in life then, you are truly lucky. I hope for you that you have a friend like I have in your dad.”
While the setting and the tempered pace were a relief, it was not so much where I went for the weekend, but who I went with. It’s easy in New York to spend a lot of time among strangers. To go out each weekend in search of something, but encounter the same old. In fact, last year at the time of this trip I was worried about missing nights out in the city.
But now I realize how lucky I am to have such true friends to spend weekends with, in the city or away.
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