In A House By The Sea

Message to stressed-out moms: let your mother watch the kids, and head to the beach. "Away, beachwoman, away with you to the beach! You've had enough reality," says Gingras, author of five previous inspirational gift books, including The Uh-Oh Heart. Once beachside, she advises, read without interruption, drink a piña colada, eat out, veg out and let "him" do the work. This book-an amalgamation of prose, poetry and illustrations-is a reminder to readers that happiness and the beach go hand in hand. Short essays give loose pointers on living simply; poems explain "what a beach house is for" and offer things to remember when building a sand castle; lists chronicle the joys of summer at the beach, from the Good Humor man to the blast of the lifeguard whistle; and watercolors memorialize everything from flip flops to an open window letting the breeze in. Gingras's book is at times personal, as when the author relates sitting with a man on the beach, he reading and she watching as they exist "so close and so separate," but its overarching message will be enjoyable to any woman in love with the beach.
— Publishers Weekly

"In In a House by the Sea, the reader gets into a beachy mood without ever having gone to a beach. A must-read for anyone seeking solace by the shore."
— Joan Anderson, author of A Year by the Sea, An Unfinished Marriage, and A Walk on the Beach

“The house of the book’s title means more than a roof, four walls and a porch. It’s that psychic place that we all try to reach where the important dominates the petty. It’s a place where life can be lived for every glorious moment: every dawn, every sunset, every storm.”
— The Beachcomber


A “collection of short essays, stories, poetry and illustrations that touch on just about every aspect of beach life at its best, full of daydreams and hopes, solitude and togetherness, beauty, relaxation and blissful contentment.”
— The SandPaper

A “heartwarming and sometimes funny mix of prose, poetry and illustrations”
— The Press of Atlantic City

“In her delightful In a House by the Sea, Sandy Gingras evokes how good things can be when you and your environment are in happy agreement.”
— Stephen Dunn, 2001 Pulitzer Prize-winner for poetry, Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing, Richard Stockton College of New Jersey

In a House by the Sea: 
Where Life can be Lived for Every Glorious Moment

By Perdita Buchan
 (Published in The Beachcomber)

I may be the perfect audience for the new book by Sandy Gingras, In A House By The Sea. After all, I do live in one which I guess makes me a "beach woman". Although I can’t say I always achieve the verve of Gingras’s "beach woman". I’m not always capable of closing my eyes and letting it be when the house is a welter of sand toys and wet beach towels, for instance. Still, a close association with the vast pathlessness of the ocean has made me a little better at embracing change and navigating life without, as Gingras succinctly puts it, a map.

In this charmingly serendipitous book, the writer addresses a number of topics in forms varying from the poetic essay, to pages of delicate drawings and even a rebus. Where she begins is probably where all beach lovers begin, with a childhood memory. She describes the family car trip, the arrival in the "overgrown driveway" of the summer house, running onto the beach, the open ocean, the high sun. That memory is universal because, as she points out, "this moment never really happened. A couple of parts maybe, but the rest is a mixture of fiction and dream and desire." This ability to describe that powerful mix of reality and dream and desire is what Gingras does so well. This gift, reflected in her earlier books like How To Live On An Island and How To Live At The Beach, allow her to transcend her particular beach place and create something that all beach lovers (and probably those who don’t love the beach) can recognize.

Summer at the beach is about becoming part of the natural world. You swim in the ocean, bury yourself in the sand. The beach is always with you. The sound of the waves follows you; sand is everywhere – in your shoes, in your bed. The house of the book’s title means more than a roof, four walls and a porch. It’s that psychic place that we all try to reach where the important dominates the petty. It’s a place where life can be lived for every glorious moment: every dawn, every sunset, every storm. How familiar are the things she describes: curtains blowing "like ghosts" in the sea wind, parents dancing to Frank Sinatra, Parcheesi at night on the porch. Who doesn’t remember that "one shampoo nobody likes" parked permanently on a ledge in the outside shower? And doesn’t everyone’s couch collect M&Ms and pen caps?

Gingras combines this eye for detail with gentle humor, as when she describes her neighbors barbecuing next door. There’s humor, too, in each page of whimsical drawings like "woman on vacation" or "flip flop moods" featuring the perennial beach footwear. In A House By The Sea is a mercurial sort of read, moving from humor and nostalgia to life lessons about change and acceptance and love. In a touching piece called "The Moon Is Sorry", she writes about the beach women, mothers and aunts, of her childhood. Did they, she wonders, ever get to just be or were they always taking care of someone – wrapping a shivering child in a beach towel, cooking corn and flounder for dinner?

Sandy Gingras writes particularly for women, "beach women" or not, urging us to let go of all the expectations that hamper us. I think she wishes us all what she wishes her mothers and aunts: a day "luscious and selfish enough to make the moon sorry". If there’s an element of self help here, it comes without the earnest proselytizing of most self help books. Just take a look at the "A Is For Attitude" alphabet: "Z is for zither and zoology and Zena the Warrior Princess and all those things that you will never do or be, and how perfectly ok that is with you." When we strip down to bathing suit and flip flops, we can strip away a lot of other things too.

Copyright c. 2005 Jersey Shore Newsmagazines and reprinted, in its entirety, from The Beachcomber with permission.

"The ability to describe that powerful mix of reality and dream and desire is what Gingras does so well. This gift, reflected in her earlier books, allows her to transcend her particular beach place and create something that all beach lovers (and probably those who don’t love the beach) can recognize. Charmingly serendipitous."
— The Beachcomber

From the Inside Flap

"My mother used to tell me that if I stayed in the ocean for too long I'd turn into a fish. She'd examine me later and say, "There's sand in your ears; I think it's gotten into your brain. If I listen to your heart, you are like a conch shell. I think I can hear the ocean waves echoing."

And it was true. The sea got inside of me somehow. And it stayed... and changed me... and defined me. I am part fish, part sand, part echoey wave. And wherever I go, I'm in a house by the sea. Navigation and Change, Storm, Shell and Sunset, The Moment and The Moon — all the questions and lessons of the sea are a part of me. These are things I think and write and doodle about in this book.

It is a little bit serious, a little bit fairy tale, part struggle, part ease, and some nostalgia and childhood and philosophy all rolled into one — just like a day at the beach."

How to Build a Castle

Just start somewhere.
Who can leave the world untouched?.
Use your hands so you can feel it.
Use what washes up so that the castle grows from what is already here.
The kids who join you (and they will...as soon as you begin) will help you and will find things that you never could have found.
They will name the castles “The Crab Shell Hotel” “ The Crooked Palace of Sand,” “The Road of Broken Shells,” and “The Pool of Dreamy Dreams” so that you’ll become attached to these places. Within an hour, it will be a world and you will be in love with it.
And you will know all of the childrens’ names.
Wipe the sand from that one’s eye.
Everyone needs a buried treasure: Put an X somewhere.
Everyone needs a high tower where the beautiful princess is imprisoned:
Make little crumbling steps with your finger that she cannot climb down
Everyone needs a road that goes nowhere.
Everyone needs a labyrinth to be lost in.
Smooth it all with your palm.
Build a dragon who might guard the city? Eat the city? Turn into a prince and marry the princess?
It’s all possible.
Get sunburned shoulders. Get sand in your bathing suit.
Race against the tide. Because the tide will be coming in...it always is when you build a castle.
So build a wall and a moat and then another wall.
These are hopeless tasks, but build them anyway...
You know you have to.
Put your whole being into them and then laugh when they crumble.
Go ahead, laugh.
This is your world...
Get down on your knees in the Crooked Palace of Sand.
Immerse yourself in the Pool of Dreamy Dreams.
Fly the flag of seaweed.
These are your unclimbable steps,
This is your buried treasure.
Love your dragon prince with all your dragon heart.
And when you have lost to the tide, join in the losing.
Jump your feet all over your towers.
Then splash into the waves with all the otherdenizens of the lost world:
The lost boys and the lost girls.
Dive and float and spew little fountains of water.
We lose worlds like this all the time.
The world is sand
The world is fluid
Build with it.

Outside Shower

There’s a tinge of rust in the air, a hint of mildew, an old-board wet sand smell. A cobweb droops in the corner. The cap to an ancient shampoo bottle is wedged in the floorboards. No one will ever get it out. No one will ever try.
The soap has been here a while in this enamel soap dish that Kevin screwed to the wall a little crookedly. There’s a layer of sand embedded in it. And that one shampoo that nobody likes has been here for 2 years. It sits on the wooden ledge with Karyl’s rusty barrette and the perfect little black scallop shell. It doesn’t change much in here. The door rattles a bit when the breeze blows. But time can’t get in. It’s always August in here, always the luscious middle of vacation. Reality is always a good month away...This is the place where summer stays. See, there’s the 1996 Surf Fishing Tournament hat hanging on the hook, there’s the faded towel a little stiff with salt, there’s the bathing suit dripping.
In this secret gloomy little half-room, I’m removed from the world But I’m only 50 feet away from my neighbor’s deck where he is barbecuing. “Hon,” he calls to his wife, “can you bring me the spatula?” The screen door slaps. I can hear another outside shower running too–down the street. I slide my bathing suit off and make it into a sodden pile with my feet. The shower is streaming all over me its slow irregular rainy beat, its lukewarm softness. I am utterly naked. I am rivulets. I am pelted with ease. I am washed and un-salted. I am freshened-up. The air is swirling around my legs. I smell hamburgers sizzling on the barbecue. Someone else’s kid yells, “Mom?” I am soaping up and frothy. My skin is squeaking. Why are tan lines so sweet and interesting and appealing? Inside the house, my family is bustling around without me, or perhaps just lazily thinking about dinner. This is contentment. I am in a stall of rain; I am my own box of weather. This must be what a cloud feels like when it comes home from its long flight, but nobody knows it’s home yet. It’s just standing on the doorstep feeling the nearness of being there. Feeling light, homey, arrived but not yet burdened with arrival.
I am a mermaid. I am fishy and wild, domestic and exotic. This is as mundane as standing under a faucet, but I feel like something primal, an out-island woman. A waterfall, a sky. This is a church of the outside kind. I am washed of my mind. I am washed of the past and the future. It’s all present in here. It’s all pause. The strawberry cheap shampoo, the grit of the soap, the jar of lead sinkers that nobody knows how to dispose of on the shelf. “Yoohoo,” someone calls from next door. It’s not for me. This is heaven, I tell you, this is heaven.