To "Summer" or Not to "Summer"?

I am spending a nice, relaxing week at the beach with my family. The first thing I always notice upon arriving at the quiet corner of Cape Cod where my parents have their beach house is how straight-out-of-the-Polo-catalog-adorable the kids are. They are altogether blonder, preppier, and more outdoorsy than the kids where we live. The kids who summer on Cape Cod do not look like they spend hours playing video games in their bedrooms.

Then, just as I've gotten used to the angelic blondness of the local kids, I notice the moms. Wow, are they pretty! You remember that girl in college who excelled at field hockey, took extra courses because of her double major, did loads of charity work, yet still managed to be friends with everyone and was always smiling? Well, it appears that every single mom around here was "that girl" at her college. If life were a rom-com, the moms where I live would play the loud, funny best friend, but these Cape moms would all be leading ladies.  

Pretty soon my mind begins to wander back to when I was a girl and my family would spend a week at the Cape--we'd stay at a house in a neighborhood where the families often stayed for the entire summer. I'd spend the whole week playing catch-up with the few beach "friends" I had and most of the time feeling clueless and pale. I didn't know the rules to the games they played and their inside jokes went right over my head. I so desperately wanted to be one of them: all sun bleached hair, golden skin, and freckled noses...sharp tan lines and perfectly worn rope bracelets. 

And now I'm all grown up, yet spending a week in this insular Cape town can make me feel like that child again. The moms all know each other--most of them spend the summer here with the kids, waiting for their husbands to drive down every weekend. They are on local committees, they plan parties and set up play-dates between their kids, and their adorable spawn take swimming, tennis, and sailing lessons through the local yacht club. For the most part, they live in wealthy Boston suburbs; because we live a four-hour (at least) drive away in New York, this arrangement could never work for us. Which is too bad...because once, just once in my life, I really want to try the whole "summering" thing. 

I will probably always be an outsider here. Which doesn't bother me so much now that I'm a grown up. But I do wonder how spending a week or two here each summer will affect my kids as they get older. Will they experience the same sort of alienation I did? Will the wealthy and beautiful kids here make my kids feel inadequate? Or worse, will seeing all those silver spoons cause my children to resent living in the middle-class town we call home?

Hey, perhaps witnessing all that wealth will make my kids appreciate our less-adorned life at home. A mother can hope, you know.