Disconnecting to Re-Connect

She Said

August 9, 2011 – Sippewissett Campground, Falmouth, MA


Disconnecting to re-connect was how I left my Facebook status update before going off to Cape Cod for three weeks.  I’ve been coming to Falmouth and Woods Hole, MA since 2004 with the kids attending the Children’s School of Science for science classes.  My friend Kim started coming here in 1999 with her marine-loving son Joshua, another homeschooled kid. While Maddy and Miranda weren’t particularly so interested in science when we started going to the Cape, they did, and still do love to learn just about anything. Being on Cape Cod with friends while attending classes was a perfect blend of my homeschooling style, and as Kim said to me – Taking the show on the road.

We didn’t participate in science school for the past two years. It does take a considerable amount of effort to get here, a certain amount of cash, and a chunk of time, as class sessions are 3 weeks or 6 weeks. But Miranda aged into the class she’s been so wanting and waiting to take for years (Biological Illustration) so how could I not make it happen this year? Stephen took his first class this year and I am happy to say has been liking the new experience. You never know with him. He has his definite likes and dislikes. So here we are.

One aspect I’ve learned to fully appreciate is that technology ceases to be part of my life for three weeks. I disconnect from my life back home in a lot of ways. Cell phones don’t always work and I have no computer/internet access except in the campground office. (I confess Max brought his laptop with him when he arrived the last week. That’s how I’m writing this.)  I’m still not a fan of tents (getting there though – who knows what crazy wild things I might do next year!) and I stay in a tiny cabin and have electricity, a fridge, and a toilet.

Years ago when I started the Cape Cod adventure I painfully learned to be on my own with the three kids in a new place. I did have some help from friends also staying at the campground, but the bulk of the work of was on me while at the same time  trying to figure out new nitty-gritty things for me like pumping gas where Self-pumping in Massachusetts was the norm. (I always found the one gas station that had Full Service. HA!)  Not having a cell phone to talk with Max, back at home, was a challenge I really didn’t like.  I needed that technology to connect with him to ask him questions about the bike rack, getting the bikes on the rack, the car and its funny noises.  I remember thinking the first year when my cell call once again dropped the call after a mere “hello, it’s me honey”,  that it would be easier to communicate with the dead than try to get through to my husband via cell phone from this dead zone campground!! (Ooh that time at the salt marsh when three-year-old Stephen put a teeny tiny, itty-bitty shell in the ignition so I couldn’t put the key in, almost did me in. Thankfully Joshua was with me, as well as our Swiss Army knife, which had a little plastic tweezer neatly tucked in one of its magic compartments.)

Each year I got better at the whole experience and I would call it Being in Cape Cod Mode. I became stronger and more confident.  The kids got older too and made it easier. This year I knew how wonderful it would be to spend three weeks on Cape Cod at the campground while also doing an incredible amount of biking, swimming, dancing, and learning science in Woods Hole, then coming home to our 10’x 10’ cabin to read library books before bed. I was really looking forward to disconnecting from the internet, email, phone calls and re-connecting to my children. I always re-connect with them on a very basic level while here, being able to fully focus on them and only having to wear my favorite hat – my mama-hat. I was really looking forward to that hat this trip. However what also happened this trip surprised me: I started to re-connect with myself.  I wasn’t expecting that at all.  I immersed myself in sensations I hadn’t felt in years, connecting back to the core of Denise.  Swimming into the deep of the bay, or across the kettle pond, my long hair flowing around me, I started to feel a like a mermaid.  Biking fast on the bike path in the full sun, I felt 11 again. Folk dancing ‘til I was out of breathe and sweating up a storm –that was a new sensation. Wow.

Max has arrived a few days ago. He snuck into bed at midnight. My body short circuited. That’s what it felt like. I didn’t want to put on the Wife-Hat just yet because I was so enjoying wearing the Denise-Hat. I didn’t know to do honestly. I fought acknowledging his being there for quite a while into the night, then realized I need to welcome my husband on his short vacation with his family. I shifted gears as best I could and finally talked to him.  I told him the next morning about my re-connecting with myself and that I still wanted to revel in that. But in talking to him I realized I can still do that on my long swims – I don’t have to take the Denise Hat off at all actually. He understood, as he always does.

I think Max has been re-connecting with himself here too. He so needs a vacation to rest and have fun. We biked the 5 miles from Woods Hole back to the campground in Falmouth with the kids yesterday in a steady rainfall, with thunder far off in the distance (oh that was so incredibly wonderful!) and that evening as Max and I went for a walk to see the marsh in the light of the rising bright moon, he said he had a memory of biking in the rain from when he was younger.  We work too much to remember connecting with our younger inner selves.

Tonight we biked north on the newest part of the bike path with the kids to get ice cream at Eulinda’s just before the sun was setting. As we biked back to the campground in the dark, wearing head lamps, Max’s words of wisdom came back to me, the ones he spoke to me when we started peddling on this ice cream escapade when I was worried because it was dusk and would only get DARKER OUT!    “This is living life dear.”  He was right.

A week later:

I’m home. In retrospect connections were made on many levels by disconnecting with technology and our life back home. I re-connected with my children the first week, joyously being involved in their new experiences. I re-connected with myself the second week, sensing my inner strength and wisdom as I swam across the pond with my friend Barbara. And I re-connected with Max the third week when we rented The Annex in the main house of the campground to have more space than the tiny cabin could give us.  What more can I say? I just didn’t know how much those connections needed to be explored on our science-filled trip to Cape Cod.

---

He Said

Very well put, my dear.

It's kind of interesting that I spend my work hours immersed in technology and yet I am not really all that connected to technology in my home life.  By the time I get home, I am pretty much ready to turn off the computer and spend my time doing something non-tech.

However, I certainly did get to disconnect from my tech job and the nagging pressure of being on call all the time while on the Cape which was wonderful.

As you mentioned that day of biking several miles in the rain did reconnect me with some very happy memories from my younger years.  Only by having the space and quietness of mind to find those long-lost feelings and sense memories could they come back to the surface of my consciousness.

So I guess the challenge is finding ways to disconnect to reconnect in our "regular" lives so that we can stay in touch with ourselves, each other and our family and what is truly important to us.