Part of the trouble is that we remember each other as the people we used to be. The details of our current lives lack context.
— Ira Wood, columnist
Matters of Opinion: Cape Cod Summer Guests
We love to see them ... and we love to see them go. In this column, Ira Wood ponders the dynamics of the summer house guest.
Click on the image to listen to Ira’s column.
August 2026 – WELLFLEET, MA – It begins on Facebook mid-December, when the messages go back and forth.
“Can’t wait to see you!” “Me, too!”
And the truth is, I mean it. Until I get that call from the bridge: “Be there in an hour!”
And it’s about to take place yet again.
Do we like our guests?
Now I want to start by saying that these are good people, people who are hard working and progressive and do valuable work in the world. I’ve known them forever and although we’ve lived opposite coasts we’ve always managed to keep up with the important issues in our lives.
How have we changed?
But in spite of all our history, after the initial rush of greetings I have to grapple with the fact that I now have more in common with people I bump into at the post office than friends I’ve known since college.
Sure, we can rail about politics. We can update each other about knee operations and who recently died. But as we sit around the table for the first of many excruciatingly long dinners, I have to admit that I start to yawn when they begin scrolling through pictures of their grandchildren. And I don’t really care to hear the story of their son-in-law getting tenure at NYU.
How does the visit roll out?
Breakfast the following morning is not an improvement. Is there anything more futile than trying to make conversation while rubbing crust from corners of your eyes? Personally, I cannot construct a grammatically correct sentence before my third cup of coffee.
Over the years I have had guests who regard silence as a form of rudeness and insist on filling every moment of shared space with idle talk. One old friend, wanting to maximize our precious time together, was fond of shadowing me, literally following within twelve inches of every step I took, while engaging in a relentless cross examination designed to catch us up after living three thousand miles apart for forty years.
Do we remember who we used to be?
Part of the trouble is that we remember each other as the people we used to be. The details of our current lives lack context. To my freshman roommate, who knew me when I was seventeen, I will always be the clutz who dropped what would have been a game winning pass in an intramural football game. And he still thinks it’s funny.
Do your guests hide behind a book in the living room, pretending to read, while waiting for you to appear? I will confess that I once climbed out a window, crept around my house and through the woods, to avoid a couple who insisted I go with them to the beach.
Why is it hard to relax?
Now let me say right here, I am one of those people who has trouble being on vacation even when I am on vacation and I bristle at people who tell me I need to get chill.
Yes, I sometimes I like the beach, but I don’t enjoy horse flies, rip currents, cruising around for a parking space, or people who stand in the water up to their wastes saying they’re going to take a dip when they’re really going to take a pee.
If I want to visit the beach I’ll go when the mood strikes me, thank you, not to prove to an old friend I’m not an uptight workaholic. Because I am an uptight workaholic.
What is the happy ending?
But there is at least one wonderful occasion every year: that last bittersweet breakfast together, full of laughter and selfies and croissants, hugs and promises of winter a rendezvous; the moment when we say good-bye and post pictures of this year’s visit to Facebook, where they will live in perpetuity like all our memories of summer visits with dear old friends, in crystalline perfection.
I’m Ira Wood…and that’s my opinion.
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Ira Wood hosts The Lowdown, a weekly interview program on WOMR-FM featuring authors, politicians, artists, and scientists, as well as cops, addicts, and fishermen. His guests have included the famous, the infamous, and the eccentric, as well as dedicated men and women who work to make the Cape and the world a better place. He served four terms on the Wellfleet Board of Selectmen.
