THERE are five of us. Five sisters. During the year we live hundreds if not thousands of miles apart; most summers we collide in a house in southeastern Connecticut which we bought together in 1972.
It's not the worst idea in the world, sharing a summer house among siblings, although people always look at me sideways when I mention it. They can't believe that we all get on well enough to survive the scrutiny and rigours of an annual reunion.
When we signed the deed, I don't think anyone suspected that we'd all still be hauling ourselves back to a remote corner of Connecticut year after year, or that the babies we brought there at the beginning would grow into twentysomething sentimentalists, eager to travel from all corners of the States every summer to see one another in a house where they are not even guaranteed a bed. (Of five bedrooms, the largest is known as the pit; the bunkroom has six beds; the one with en suite facilities is grandly described as the bridal suite).
It has become an alternative headquarters; a centre, a returning, a vivid comparative. It is a touchstone of sorts, a place to rekindle energy, sort each other out and pack each other off into the world for another year. People come and go in waves. Some weeks you might have it to yourself, the next weekend might find 20 or more people baying at the door, a mix of generations.
Sound Breeze also turned out to be a fine investment which, because we rent it out for nine months every year, long ago paid for itself. You could call it Sound Wheeze.
The two eldest sisters, the sirens, came up with the idea just when the next generation had begun to assert itself; when family gatherings had become a wreck of push chairs, high chairs, car seats and cots. By the early 1970s there were about six gummy, bald headed babies smiling back at us . . . a beach house, understandably, had sudden appeal.
With the babies came the notion of equitably dividing childcare and domestic tasks. Young parents still in shock could cast off their chains and head for New York or Boston for a few days while others held the fort. Meanwhile the cousins could bask happily at the beach. That was the theory. Including partners, a doting, eccentric aunt and our mother, 12 people agreed to sign the mortgage. Oh lucky solicitor.
House hunting began in earnest one autumn. Cape Cod was deemed too far away by the New Yorkers in the group; Connecticut a less foggy compromise. Distant cousins had summered in a place called Groton Long Point, a slice of Americana that had barely changed since the 1950s. It had its very own police force to keep it that way. A house was found, opposite a marsh. New York City was just over two hours away by train; Boston IV hours; Newport, Rhode Island, an hour's drive.
GROTON Long Point is a peninsula jutting out into the Long Island Sound. The speed limit - 25 m.p.h. - is rigorously monitored by the local police who, truth he told, have very little else to do. We're not talking Hill Street Blues here. The officers look entirely overdressed, what with their guns and all, as they swagger down the boardwalk, or cruise around in their one patrol car in hot pursuit of local criminals: the child minus a bicycle helmet; the driver with the "malfunctioning" indicator; the teenager weaving recklessly aboard a skateboard. Fearsome stuff. With only a post office and a tiny general store, there are no banks or off licences to rob, no bars for brawls.
But there is a fire station and an ambulance, too, and both vehicles are principal features in the Fourth of July parade. Did I hear you say time warp. Think of a Norman Rockwell painting. Corny, but true. GLP is clearly not noted for its ethnic diversity. More of a Yankee stronghold, you might say. Families have held on to their houses here for generations, a summer respite from the rules of winter.
It is a hopelessly, wholesomely healthy place. New England weather is all sparkling blues and greens and blinding white light; the sea breeze eases the heat of August. Perfect colour fast days. (In the winter, when the place has been abandoned, I imagine it is grey and damp.)
The rollerbladers/walkers/joggers and cyclists are up and rolling by 7 a.m. or so, down to the casino for newspapers and a cup of coffee. Kids spend endless hours catching easily deceived crabs at low tide. We dig up clams to steam or throw into a chowder. You can walk for hours and end up at the edge of a jetty to dangle your weary feet in the water. By night the water becomes luminous with jellyfish glinting in the moonlight nearby lighthouses and buoys and fog horns sound their singular marine songs. Sometimes there are clattering storms; on hot nights the cicadas and crickets buzz and drone.
If all this sounds unbearably pastoral, neighbouring towns are well stocked with shops and restaurants and cinemas and other corrupting diversions - the town of Mystic not only has pizza, as in the movie, but a huge aquarium and whaling museum. Stonington, a beautifully restored whaling town, has a strong Portuguese community with a Galwayesque type festival every summer; New London has Eugene O'Neill's house, Monte Cristo Cottage, its screen doors still creaking on their hinges the claustrophobic setting for Long Days Journey Into Night. Nearby is a good summer stock theatre and an old fashioned dairy farm which sells ice cream to die for.
There are firm stands and roadside antique dealers and yard sales and country fairs. The town of Ledyard hosts one of the biggest casinos in the world, notoriously run by Pequot Native Americans on tax free reservation land. The casino has made so much money in recent years that they have kindly bailed the state of Connecticut out of near bankruptcy. The Pequot Nation is at long last getting its own back.
THE real benefactors of the arrangement, of course, have been the cousins - all 14 of them, who now range in age from 8 to 29. They've become almost more attached to this house than to the houses they grew up in. This is where they all got to know one another, learned to sail and swim and smoke cigarettes.
When young, they were safe to cycle shoeless through the streets to the beach, where lifeguards are always on watch; on rainy days there were organised games in the hall, by night there were films and totally hick little dances.
Of course there were fights and feuds and favourites and fads.
They came with pink hair and long hair and no hair; they took summer jobs in nearby towns as waitresses, bus boys and jugglers to earn money for the school year; they brought friends and beaux, shared triumphs and woes. (It's reassuring to those of us who haven't weathered the teenage years yet to see that these creatures do emerge on the other side of 20 with their minds and hair intact). The cousins became staunch allies.
So when you're gazing out from yours rented cottage in West Cork or Kerry or Donegal, Connemara or Laois this summer, consider the idea of buying something like it. Sharing a mortgage with friends or family is not as impossible as cynics would have you believe. It is not all about burst pipes and leaking roofs and unpaid promises.
Keep it simple. Find someone locally willing to act as caretaker or contact. Rent it out occasionally when times get tough. Get the rules straight from the staff.
We sit around the kitchen table and have solemn "board meetings". Responsibilities are rotated from year to year. One year you're treasurer and have to pay all the bills; another year you might oversee general maintenance tasks. Everyone has a noble annual project: paint the kitchen; plant a border; rescreen the porch, scrub down the showers. You get it over with as quickly as possible.
Overall, one of the biggest attractions of the place is, I think, its simplicity. There is no family china to break; no heirlooms to worry over. The much fought over outdoor shower keeps sand at bay. There is no television! The cooking and food shopping is shared. No one person must act as host; everyone is on holiday and that means there is time for uninterrupted reading and long walks and long conversations. Quite different to landing at someone's house and expecting to be entertained.
Needless to say, if your friends and family live down the road from you already thank you very much, there is no need for such a gathering place. But if your family has gone global. it can be a welcome anchor. With luck and grace, it will become a place to take pause with friends and loved ones; a safe haven from the wintry world.