Souvenirs

With less than a week to go before Labor Day, I panicked that I haven’t been to the ocean as often as I thought I would.

I headed down to Ponquoque Beach to spend time with my son and granddaughters. At the end of August, in the parking lot, it’s not unusual to see broken beach chairs, single flip-flops or battered paperbacks with pages curling from the salt air — remnants of summer vacation. The beach buckets filled with sand, and maybe a hermit crab or a carefully curated shell collection, brought back memories.

There’s a gentle melancholy in these abandoned belongings, yet also a sense of continuity, as if the beach itself gathers up memories like shells washed ashore.

I thought of souvenirs, things that remind us of a place we visited and memories we want to preserve.

For years, we bought Christmas ornaments from places we visited. Always two, one for each child, thinking that they would have these mementos to decorate their own Christmas trees. I envisioned them opening boxes filled with childhood memories while they drank eggnog as Christmas songs played in the background, telling their own children, “This sailboat is my favorite. It’s from sailing school in Key West. Your aunt was seasick, but I loved it.”

Nope, not even close. No interest. The ornaments don’t fit their minimalist décor. So, we don’t bother to buy souvenirs for our grandchildren, unless they are with us.

Most American attractions require you to walk through the gift shop to get to the exit. We try to talk the children into pencils or magnets instead of oversized, overpriced stuffed animals that their parents will quickly make disappear.

However, we did buy red ruffled Flamenco dresses for our two youngest grands when we were in Spain. We thought they might come in handy for Culture Week in school, or Halloween costumes. The video of them dancing wearing the dresses is hysterical.

On the same trip, I kept the shoehorn that came in a toiletry kit in our hotel, because we don’t have one, but mainly because it reminded me of my father.

On our trip to Ireland, we fell in love with Louis Mulcahy pottery that evoked the land and the sea. We were ready to buy a service for eight before we realized the price of shipping, which was triple the cost of the pottery. We settled for two mugs.

During a trip to Africa, a friend purchased a shield adorned with animal skin, a carved circle of giraffes, wooden Maasai warriors, bookends and salad tongs, which were shipped to a terminal at JFK. After all that, she realized that many of the items could have been purchased in the States.

I am all for wearable souvenirs and accessories. On a recent trip to Italy, my hairdresser bought a leather jacket, shoes and gold jewelry. My daughter Facetimed me from Italy to show me three pocketbooks she was considering and wondered which one she should buy. There was a clutch, a tote and a shoulder bag. I said, “Buy all three.”

After touring a UNESCO olive grove in Puglia, someone I know, who shall remain nameless, purchased 12 bottles of olive oil, which they forgot to declare. (All food products must be declared to U.S. Customs.) She arrived at a friend’s dinner party with a bottle of the olive oil. After the hostess tasted it, she cried, because the taste brought her back to Italy, where she traveled yearly as a child.

Friends and family who have lived abroad tend to have the most impressive collections. My cousin brought home large pine cupboards she acquired after spending five years in Holland. A friend who asks herself “why?” has 30 Japanese teapots in a display case. Two 5-foot-long framed maps of Cote de Nuits and Cote de Beaune grace my niece’s dining room walls in shades of pink and green, indicating the types of grapes grown.

Photos are a wonderful way to hold a memory, especially if they are edited and bound into a book, or favorite ones protected by a frame. But some memories are indelibly printed in your psyche. Watching the sunrise over the Grand Canyon, touring the fjords of Norway or the lasting impression of actually standing in Anne Frank’s apartment don’t need external reminders.

Last week, I stood at the top of the Ponquogue Bridge and wondered what memories people take with them from our vacation playground.

Runners wired with earplugs and bikers, heads down, whizzed by. Walkers like myself stopped to enjoy the best view in the Hamptons. Families passed in cars loaded with boogie boards and coolers. The ocean beach parking lot was packed. In the distance, seal-like surfers carried their boards through cuts in the sea grasses.

Fisherman cast their lines off the leg of the old bridge. Boats sit in the breadbasket, hoping for a bite, while larger boats headed toward the inlet into the ocean. Red-and-white flags alert that scuba divers have slipped into the water. Clammers dug on charcoal flats.

Many of us are full-time residents, but we were initially summer people who commuted for hours just to end our days watching the sunset on the bay, surfing a few waves or just smelling the salt air.

Once you get sand between your toes, it brings you back to the East End.