U2 "The Sweetest Thing"

For young single guys who live on the Vineyard, it’s a common rite of passage that you date a summer girl.

You know, she’s here from somewhere, spending the summer working in a restaurant, here to have fun and then leave come August. Or maybe she’s come to the Island with her family, in a seasonal home 10 times as nice as the “room” (actually walk-in closet, fitted with a mattress) that is your summer shuffle rental. And you’re the doesn’t-like-to-be-tied-down type who’s happy to be in a relationship that has a fixed expiration date.

And there’s a special sub-set of this phenomenon, which itself is a rite of passage:

Dating a nanny.

It's a slightly different experience than just dating a summer girl. It opens up a different world of the Vineyard.

Yes if someone can afford to have a second home that they only visit a few weeks a year . . . a second home worth a million (or millions of) dollars . . . then they can afford to hire someone to keep an eye on their kids.

I dated a nanny one summer. Nice girl. She was my age and she was in charge of a young teen and a pre-teen. So a date might be her picking me up in one of the SUVs the family had rented for the summer, with kids in tow, and going out for dinner. It was strange for me coming from a family that did not really believe in taking children to restaurants, to be with some very poised, self-assured youngsters who didn’t think twice about ordering the lobster tails. The nanny was always given a nice handful of cash to take care of the tab. Then maybe we’d drop the kids at the arcade while we'd hang in the car.

I got to see parts of the Vineyard I’d never been to. I’d tag along as the family got invited to private beaches, some of the most beautiful on the Island, where, yeah, I ran into a celebrity or two. And beyond celebrities, I met the kind of folks who aren’t famous, but are incredibly interesting---people who’d made their fortunes in computers or retail or science and discovery. A class of people who populated the island for a few months, but rarely co-mingled with the electricians and bartenders and boat builders that I knew so well from my local pub.

Being a little older than the average summer-flingers, my nanny and I did try to make a go of it when she returned to California, stretching our summer relationship from coast to coast until just past the new year. But summer is summer, and as we experience here every year, summer has to end.

A good friend of mine tried the same thing---met a nanny on the island, tried to continue the relationship, long distance. But she was from Sweden, and yeah, despite their best efforts, summer has to end.

But when we'd swap dating-a-nanny-on-the-Vineyard stories, he'd sing this song, because, you know, "Oh oh-whoa, The Swedish thing."

I like hearing this song, at this time of year. I smile, thinking about the year-round boys (and girls) who've been looking at the same faces for months on end, who's long winter has finally ended. And I think about the summer girls (and boys, and nannies) who are unpacking their bags in a room that will be their home for the next ten weeks. Each group wondering if they'll find the other, wondering if summer romance is in the Vineyard stars.