Diamond Factor

When I was growing up, my Grandmother (my dearly beloved Grammy) had a summer house that had been in her family for generations in a prestigous beach area, and if my cousins and I (all 16 of us) could help it at all, we spent our entire summer's there, with her. It was one of those deals where all of the Aunts  Uncles and cousins got together in Newport at the beginning of the summer, and then Par, my grandfather, would start going back to the city on Sunday nights to work all week and return on Friday nights for the weekends revelry. Gradually, each of our Fathers followed him, and eventually even our Mothers had too many commitments to just hang out at the beach all summer, and home they'd go. Making Grammy and her staff the best  nanny's that any of us had ever not gotten fired.

Grammy's yard was magnificent, it consisted of beautiful rose and hydrangea gardens (the hydrangea's were sea blue and snow white and had heads the size of bowling balls), and deep emerald green, vast rolling lawns that ended in the most pristine of sand beaches on the ocean that I have ever seen in New England, no rocks, not one I swear!

The house was what today would be called a 'white elephant'.
It was enormous, with a large porch and sleeping 'towers' (as it was an old Victorian) within which my cousins and I had wild experiences, and from which we extracted great treasures, cradles, and old jewelry boxes with (old costume) jewelry in them that we were convinced were the crown jewels of Ireland!
I think that the house in Newport is where my writing career actually began, as I began to journal there and later wrote many a short story and one short novel based upon those journal entries! (Those that I prevented the boys from swiping from me in any case!) 

One year, my cousin Pammy was to be sent to 'boarding camp' (we all went to boarding school, so it just stood to reason that we'd call camp such a thing..) Pamela was a rather challenging child, the youngest of five girls, most a good many years older than Pam was, she had a tendency to challenge, and succeed. Today, she is a highly successful trial lawyer in LA.

**The picture to the left is of Grammy in the middle, and a few of my cousins and I. Pamela is the one over Grammy's right shoulder waving her hand, whom everyone in that row is looking at, I am at the far end of that row, in a white sweater.
Pammy was also my idol. I was just a year younger than her but at that age, a year was a lot; and I tramped around after her as best I could, always expecting to be ditched. Unless, of course,  I was being fronted for some crime committed at Christmas time or in Grammy's summer yard.
So, that summer, as Pammy had less than no intention of getting into the car or on a camp train of any sort, a plan was devised.
As you may have figured out, Pam was the leader of the pack, she taught me absolutely everything that I know of subterfuge, especially when it came to parents, nanny's or the debutante ball.
On Hellday (so named by the boys, because we had no idea what we were doing) Pam was to get into the closet under the stairs and we were to go outside after having shut her bathing suit and toothbrush (a bathingsuit was all that a kid needed during the summer and the toothbrush was designed to scare the holy daylights out of 'them', because Pammy never used that or a comb anyway, and everyone knew it!) in the closet with her, and begin trolling 'the grounds' calling her name and searching for her. Needless to say, she was found before we even reached the beach, we all got busted, she as usual got away with it all as she got to board that old camp train, while the rest of us chopped (Pammy would just have eaten them with a bit of salt) tomatoes, squash and carrots for Grammy's cook, Bess for weeks on end during the best game hours in the neighborhood which were always right before dinner time.

We were also forced to continue ballroom dancing lessons that summer, for the ENTIRE summer, which would otherwise not have happened.
During this particular summer, I recall Grammy waking up each morning in her bedroom (which overlooked the ocean) and saying to the housekeeper, "Well, Bella what is the diamond factor today"?
Since we could hear anything that we wanted from our warren of 'tower rooms', we generally listened to Grammy in the morning as she made many interesting phone calls before getting out of bed!
Bella would respond either enthusiastically, or with a shrug and you could hear Bella shrug because she grunted when she did.
Her enthusiastic response came on the sunniest of days, when the fog burned off the water early, and the wind was still up a bit.

Bella would always say, "Well Miss Mona, (yes, we also shared a name) the factor is about that of yer first ring".
(First engagement ring, not from Par) We were told that Grammy was the belle of the ball in her day, and had accepted many an engagement ring back then, which was when a lady never returned any jewelry that a gentleman gave to her, rather she had it reset into a broach or put it in her safe doncha know!
Her first ring was rather large, though not the biggest, so what we hoped always to hear was that it was the size of 'that ice on yer finger taday'
Bella, despite her Italian sounding name, was, of course, Irish, as Grammy would hire none other, because everyone else was a thief!
Our reason for our hopes that the factor would be high?
Well, because it was the diamond factor, in other words, how sparkly the water was that day depended upon not only sun, but how breezy it was and therefore how good the surf was, so to us a high diamond factor meant surfers.

Which in our hormonal minds meant that we could put on our best bikinis that Denise (our oldest cousin, she was in college!) bought us each at the beginning of the summer without our mother's knowledge, and, with one piece suits on top, beneath the beach coverups that we were rapidly learning to stop arguing about, and our make up hidden in a beach bag, we were set!
Dropping our bags of goodies in the butler's pantry, we'd quickly go to the dining room and eat as much oatmeal as our excited tummies could handle, (which alone should have been a clue) clear our own places so as to endear us to Bess (for the morning anyway). Then we'd slink out the kitchen door (clue #2) only to bolt across the lawn to the sand, and up to Bailey's beach in record time!
At some point along the way we'd always have a seat in the sagebrush and apply the makeup that our cousin Suzy saved for us when she and Denise cleaned out their makeup drawer each spring, (meaning that we had only the coolest shades of white lipstick and shell pink blush!) and peel off all of our extraneous outer wear which we'd soundly stash where we sat!
Then, off we went, on to who knew what adventures that day would hold!
By the time that I was 17, still summering there and a bit of a beach belle by then myself, with Pammy too important for Newport any longer as she was then safely in college, by the skin of her teeth because of what we'd pulled the previous summer! 
I realized that all of the 'golden' prep school boys that I knew in Newport were only going to inherit whatever their Daddy's had earned or plundered, no excitement or fun of any kind to be had by their future wives, even with travel; besides Pam and I decided that by 17, if we really were to be forced to endure that damned Christmas Cotillian at the Waldorf, we would be having a great deal of fun, all of which would be owed to us and therefore guilt free. So, I wanted out of Newport. I got out, thank you Pamela, and have only seen that house on the occasional Christmas or visit to the old town these days. 
Yet, some things really don't ever change, as to date,
whenever Pamela is around, any and all plans can and will be changed at the last minute in order to keep the excitement and air of mystery as high as possible. She is a junkie of the finest sort, Pam is, and, not unlike our Grandmother, Pammy has to have a specific element of excitement in her day or she cannot abide her life!
She would tell you that it's really very simple, and with a good accomplice or two (like me, who have to be trained from birth!), easy to do!
I have now got many wonderful memories of those days, but one of the funniest and best, was listening through the attic floorboards in that old tower to hear Bella decide how high the 'diamond factor' was going to be on every sunny morning.
That has remained with me always.
When we lived in California, it was still all about the Ocean, then, the Pacific.
Now, here in the tundra of North Eastern Maine, it tends to be the ocean, though the Atlantic. As my adult children, husband and I climb Cadillac Mtn. each summer we make sure to note the diamond factor of Penobscot Bay and the Gulf of Maine just beyond it (that is the true Atlantic, as once you head out, there will be no easterly land until you hit the European Continent).
This morning I woke up and upon walking down our staircase, which faces a wall of unadorned windows, I found that it was a sunny, sunny day.

And OH! the diamond factor on the snow! For, although it's tough to capture on film in the snow it's almost more beautiful when reflected there. How thrilled my Grammy would have been, and Caleb's Grammy is today!
Just as we were both Monas, it turns out that we are both Grammys, proud and happy ones, and with just about all of the same traditions.
Grammy has been gone for 22 years, she went out with a tremendous amount of grace which is nothing less than we would have expected of her. She didn't let us down, actually, ever.
I talk to her almost every day, telling her what's going on and how I am feeling. Perhaps more importantly, I often find myself sqeezing Caleb's hand as tightly as she used to squeeze mine.
I am so grateful that I know what a 'diamond factor' is. Something that I share now only with my cousins and sister, Leslie,  as no one else would get it.

While I'm sure that the diamond factor is not to be imagined by a mere mortal such as I, this is what I found in my own backyard, today, after a couple of good snowstorms since New Years Day, and with about three feet of snow on the ground.