Final Entry

I have a thing about being in the 2%. If everything is fine 98% of the time - well, this is not usually where you'll find me. And so began my trip home...

I was strapped into the 8 seater tiny plane to leave the island and we're gloriously roaring down the runway. The nose of the plane lifts off the ground and then - BAMB! A seagull-meets-propeller-chipper-shredder moment that leaves blood all over the engine and actually flings the leg of the bird so that it smacks into the window four inches from my face. One of my plane-mates had lived there 30 years and had never seen such a thing. I'd watched Hitchcock's The Birds last week...perhaps I'd tipped the scale. We were grounded while they found another plane. 

I missed my connection in Boston and thus got crammed into an extremely full aircraft two hours later next to a rather large nice fellow with a disturbingly reoccurring cough. I arrived in Pittsburgh, starving, only to discover my luggage had somehow failed to follow me. Seriously, two dear friends picked me up at the airport and had a cocktail waiting for me in the car - THAT is friendship. I reunited with my dog who thought I'd died, and somewhere around 11pm a lovely lady from the airline called to ask me for some more details as to the content of my suitcase for identification purposes. I literally said, "There's a soft sea green colored blanket, a long black silk nightgown, and military issue camo pants with chemical warfare grade lining." There was silence on the other end of the line.

My luggage was found and delivered yesterday, everything intact. I made curried shrimp with lentils and cilantro which the boys wolfed like they hadn't eaten in weeks, and it took me two hours at the market to restock the house. Tonight I sit looking through the pictures I took of shells and sunshine while the rain is turning to sleet outside of my window. We'll have snow by morning. Sometimes, things really do seem like a dream. 

I fell in love with Nantucket.

Sweaters

The air is thick with fog today and smells of the sea. Somehow it matches the melancholy settling in my chest. I'm packing and tomorrow will fly home - I've missed the boys and my zoo, but I fear I will miss this place more.


Jason and I are huge music people and stream Amazon music, specifically the Bassa Nova channel, often. There is a song in the que that we danced to every time it played the last few weeks - you can listen to it here. I will keep this song in my heart while I soar through the air back to Pittsburgh. Give me a day or two to clear the woebegone from my face. Thanksgiving is right around the corner; Jase will fly home and I've a turkey to brine and family coming in. Life has a way of nudging you along, no matter your gloomy feet.

Turn up the song, close your eyes, and think about nice sweaters.

Controlled Burn

When running away to an island in the off-season, prepare yourself for some time to think. Today the sky is a strange golden-grey and the rain patters against the windows as if playing music in a language I don't understand. I've done things here that I never do at home - like read the paper. Seriously. Morning light, coffee, and now I know everything about the park going in for children with disabilities, who's up in the local soccer stats, and the list of court appearances made me laugh. There was a lovely obituary for Robert Hellman and the letters to the editor were rather inciteful. An article titled "Why Fire?" caught my attention.

There has been a long tradition of 'fire ecology' on Nantucket dating back to the Native Americans who lived here previously and becoming dubbed 'controlled burning' in the 1980's. However, now after more science and study, the term used is 'prescribed fires.' Nantucket has open grasslands, heathlands, and middle moors, each of them needing an individual approach in land management. Sometimes the goal is to burn in a mosaic pattern to leave pockets of older growth; sometimes they need bare ground for new seeds.

I feel perhaps I am at a place of needing a 'prescribed fire.' Is there a doctor that could write that out for me? Maybe it's the time of year when everything is ramping up for the holidays; maybe it's just coming off a crazy busy month and missing my husband. Maybe it's having entirely too much undergrowth and deadwood in my life. I think I may need something to cut back the thicket and kill off some of the weeds. I could use a good clearing or some targeted, strategized combustion.

Do you think I might make some space...carve out a little elbow room? A meadow sounds nice.

Sundays

 "I think there's crème brulee in my belly button."

             "I think we're going to have to shower again."



This is why God made Sundays.

Storms

It was a morning dark enough that I slept till eight despite the skylight to heaven. Sheets of rain slid off the windows as Jason grilled Portuguese muffins (a new love) and eggs and I downed two cups of coffee buried beneath my favorite blanket on the couch listening to the Black Keys and Lana Del Ray. We'd just about given up hope when there was a break in the storm and we dashed for our shoes (and pants, I reminded my husband - he as a thing about saying, "I'm all ready to go...except pants." Whaaat?). We ran for the truck and made two loops to find parking and I must say, I do SO love some good thrift shopping! A stunning embroidered tablecloth long enough for our table back home, a lamp for the entryway, a butter dish, tiny frames for future paintings, a lantern for the Christmas tree, odds and bits and a lovely pearl-handled spoon for my sister. (it's tiny, but Jase picked it out just for you) By the third stop our shoes were soaked and we laughed like idiots and grabbed a bottle of wine for dinner and bundled it all inside.

Tonight we made Paella and toasted storms - those in life as well as within the skies. They can seem like the end of everything...but we weather, don't we? We plant our feet; we find our roots and stand our ground and push forward. Seasons come and will inevitably pass, experience tells us this.

Here is to the one before us now...

Colors of a Stormy Day

The storm blew in with slate skies and warm rain. After breakfast we dashed to the truck for another back-road (goat path? seriously, Jase sees an unpaved, two-tracked trail and that's where he wants to go, lol) tour of the island. Despite the weather, we still chased each other around the beach and I found a whole new collection of shells. My hair smells of salt and wind and I think I left an inch of sand in the truck. As we drove about, I kept asking Jason to stop so I could take pictures.The ocean is amazing, hands down, but the natural colors of this place are truly stunning.

Tonight we're grilling lamb and watching movies as the wind howls about the eves. Tomorrow there is an annual yard sale at the Saltmarsh we're planning on checking out - I am flying home but Jase will eventually be driving a TRUCK back to Pittsburgh...how much do you think I can fit in a truck??

Old Friends and Secret Gardens

When Jason drove to Nantucket, his truck was piled high. He's spending three seasons here and was taking bits and pieces from home to ward off the loneliness we both knew was inevitable. One of the things he asked for was one of my favorite paintings. I feel often about my work a bit like they're children; slight attachment and all that. I'm much relieved when such pieces sell to friends or people I can tell are kindred souls - I swear sometimes I feel I should use adoption papers! This particular painting spent all summer in the show I did at Space 1010, and then was only home quite briefly before being carefully packed up and tucked into the truck. I'd nearly forgotten what it looked like and then the night we arrived here, there it was.

This one is framed with a small light in the top. Jase leaves it lit all the time here, a beacon to show the way as he is waking hours before dawn every day. I love this painted forest; I swear I've walked down this path in another life as well as in my dreams, I can smell the moss on the stones.

Strange a bit to me, that is seems equally at home here as in our third floor library. Then again, where something is loved...





I have missed painting this week. However, I am well-armed with some stunning pictures of Nantucket and am already sketching for a series. The ocean may be a given, but truly, there is a "Secret Garden feel" to this place with its tall hedges, tangled shrubbery, and bewitching trees. The yard here is circular in shape and ringed with a solid wall of snarled greenery. I spend much time on the balcony in the sun, but were it warmer, we'd be picnicking our evenings away.

 

  

Speed Limits

Last night Jason and I left the market with bags of cheese and sausage, making our way home just as dusk was draping the world in eggplant and rose. The vehicle two cars ahead of us slowed and then waited with blinker on to pull into a nook on the side of the road, a woman already leaping from the car with a camera even as they stopped. It was a spectacular sunset and well worth such an endeavor.

It took a moment for traffic to begin moving again and as we trundled along I thought about how many other times I've seen the exact same thing happen here and it hit me - there had been no horns, no slamming of breaks. In fact, since arriving here, I haven't seen a single car tailgate another. There are these traffic circles with nothing but yield signs and we have been from one end of the island to the other and I've only seen turn-taking and gracious hands waving one another along - it's more miraculous the longer I think about it. I mean the vacationers are all gone, these are the year-round residents just living their lives; shopping, getting to work on time, picking the kids up after school...

Two things occurred to me: first, 45mph is the top speed limit on the island and that's only on the main drag, everything else is somewhere between 15 and 25mph. Secondly, with a length of only 14 miles, you are never far from where you're going and these things combined leave plenty of room for noticing beauty, allowing others to make their way, and stopping for deer and snapshots. 

Perhaps life needs a speed limit. In our 70mph plunge through our jobs and marriages and obligations I believe we are missing the point. We increase our technology and the effectiveness of our air-bags and then just pelt along, collision an almost inevitable end. I think I'm  I'm going to try to live my life at 40mph. Fast enough to "get there" but not miss the sunsets....you never see the same one twice. 

Hunted By The Moon

The Hunter's Moon is just six days past. The orb of light blazed full and round across the sky turning night to day and forging a second sea from the wind tossed clouds. I find full moons mesmerizing. Even exhausted I'll linger outside while the moon serenades the black-turned-silver heavens, seduced by its enchanting glow.

Three of the bedrooms in this house have skylights. Portals to heaven, I once heard them called - and as the rooms are radiant indeed, perhaps they are. However, last night sometime well before dawn, I awoke pierced by the waning moon framed in perfection above our bed - and thus was the end of sleep for me. Jason left for work and I wandered the house, finally curling up with tea in hand to watch the sun chase the night away. 

My eyes feel the grit of lost sleep beneath their lids and there's a headache hiding somewhere just around the corner. But give me a pane of glass through which to watch the moon like a glimpse into another world and my heart is thrilled...even if a bit tired.

New

I suppose it's normal, in the course of life, to find oneself surrounded by generally known things. I shop at the market I like, send mail from the same post office, buy chops at the same deli every week. I say hello to friends and smile at friendly strangers whose faces I've seen before though we've never spoke. Really, much of my life takes place in a 20 mile radius from our home. While I like a good adventure - I rather take one with a pal that's already been there and knows the area; I'm not fond of losing my way or feeling confused. I'm not sure if this is a vulnerability thing or control freak thing....likely a bit of both.

A few days ago, Jason parked and I looked at the path ahead - in a part of the world I'd never stepped foot on, going someplace I'd never seen. Now I know this isn't India and I'm not about to Eat, Pray, Love my way into some self discovery - but I sat in the truck, considering this.

It wasn't a mountain. It was simply someplace new. New is more stressful for me than known. But I'm learning that new is also where possibility waits, where dreams pull flesh onto their bones, where your plans or expectations reveal unforseen maps that weren't even on the damn blueprints.


My feet sank into the sand and the wind blew my hair into a tornado. I could hear Jase behind me, but the way was narrow and I was eager to reach the top. Sometimes, when your soul is leading, new is exactly what you need.

Life and Trees and Gnarled Thoughts

This morning I leaned on the rail of the balcony, coffee warm in hand, watching the last of the dark clouds scuttle across the horizon as the storm officially blew away. As if there were a switch in the heavens, sunlight spilled across the trees and fell upon my favorite one. The uncanny "Tree of Life" resemblance of this one still stuns me a bit. I have a passionate belief that the strength of us lies in the depths of our roots, and this tree seems strong and true. The yard of the house is hedged in a  tall wall of twisted branches and shrubbery, it seems almost as if it's part of a maze in a child's story which only adds to the beauty of this life. It stands alone, but does not seem lonely in this, more as if it is guarding...I like to think of it as the sentinel of the house.

My heart is heavy over the shooting back home. I've driven the streets of that neighborhood, know neighbors of one of the victims, my soul feels punctured. I'm thousands of miles away and my boys are 12 miles from that synagogue - and while I know they're safe, my heart trembles a bit at that. We have good friends looking after them and nearly men, all of them are, with solid heads on their shoulders...but I'm not sure that 'mother thing' is ever going to fade.

When you get on ground level and look up at this tree, these are its branches. The high winds of Nantucket prevent any real towering trees like we have back home, but I was startled at how twisted and interwoven the branches were, almost as if they were braided. I had gone to retrieve a child's ball that had blown from the porch during the storm and stood this afternoon, a bit in awe of the resilience represented here. Yesterday's storm winds were astounding, and I've been told it was "nothing." This tree has held its ground for decades, found strength in twisting and locking it's branches together.

Evening is falling here. I am far from home, but in my heart I am locking my arms with my Pittsburgh neighbors, standing strong and true for the love that will give us the fortitude and tenacity to refuse to give ground to this hate. It will not grow here.

Surprised

This morning we woke knowing the storms had arrived. There was a bit of a glitch with the heating last night but a jolly fellow was here early and soon things were toasty again. Jase fried the peppered bacon and made cheesy eggs and we sat watching the trees thrash about in the wind and listened to the rain wash the world clean. The sky was still dark enough at 9am that we ate breakfast by candle light and I found myself strangely....at home.

This is the first time I've ever stayed at a place "rented, fully furnished" and had anticipated that it might feel strange, like crashing at someone else's place...but it doesn't. Perhaps it's because Jase has been here already for two months, perhaps it's just that I'm so relieved to see his damn face, but truly - I remember walking through the door of our own home ten years ago (listed on Craig's list, kid you not) and knowing one thing: there was love in the walls. Was there work to be done? SO much. Flooring and doorways to make and ceilings to plaster and disasters yet totally unknown, but the love was there.

We played scrabble this afternoon, cocktails and laughter and music and the storm raging outside. We napped. We're eating snacks for dinner tonight as it's too windy to grill the steaks we bought. Tomorrow looks beautiful and here we are with a fire and a glass of wine...in a home with love in the walls.

Treasures

 This morning the clouds streamed across blue skies as Jase and I sipped coffee sitting on the balcony off the living room. Blankets tucked over my feet and the steam from my cup warming my nose; it was probably too chilly for most - but the sun and the sea air were worth it. We had eggs benedict at a little place while we filled out post cards for loved ones and then made a grocery run for weekend supplies as the weather looks a bit dicey in the coming days.

"I'll stay up here so I can pull you back up." he said. I loved him for that. Tom Nevers beach has a ledge, a bank of sand that one basically "surfs" down to get to the foam and shells. I grinned like a ten year-old, kicked off my shoes, and laughed as I slid down into the damp sand. I rolled up my pants and the sun made the 46* crystal air seem so much warmer as I played in the surf, the waves the music my heart has longed for.

I stuffed my pockets with shells again, there was a green bottle and a glorious feather. Treasures...perhaps only to me, but I can't wait to put tea lights in the large blue quahog shell, it's the size of my hand! (you should see the grin on my face right now) We headed home and I unpacked food, poured a glass of wine, and went to lay down for a bit. When I awoke, there was a gift bag with tissue and a ribbon on the table....treasures of another sort! Did you know there are darling liquor stores that apparently deliver bottles of liquid refreshment along with rosemary crackers and manchego? I didn't know this was a thing! We have the most lovely of friends and tonight I am feeling so blessed.

There are storms rolling in tomorrow. 100% chance of rain, high winds, and coastal flooding. Can I say - I am thrilled with this? We're not getting dressed. We're playing scrabble and bought a puzzle and we have enough firewood for days...treasures indeed.

Ocean Air

I awoke alone as Jase had long since left for the jobsite, but lay there listening to the silence of a different house. The coffee was still warm as I padded from one window to the next, taking in the morning sun and crystal sky, waiting for voices that never spoke...truly alone.

I wrote. I read. I turned the radio up and sang at the top of my lungs.

Jase came home and we took off to tour the western end of the island. Cisco Brewery was delicious (a gin cocktail with rosemary and lemon) and Bartlette's Farm held a cheese rack that made my heart beat faster. A loaf of bread threaded with whole cloves of roasted garlic and a wedge of Kal Tbach Cremeauh (no, I don't know how to pronounce that, but it's a nutty fabulous cheese from Switzerland) tucked into the paper bag along with fresh blueberries and potatoes to roast tomorrow, we trundled down dirt roads that turned into sandy paths and wound up here....

   

 

I picked up shells and shoved them into my pockets, now filled with sand and pebbled stones. We sat on a concrete bench and the wind smelled of brine and salt and suddenly there were tears smearing my mascara down my cheeks. It was like I could breathe again although I'm not sure I was ever really aware of how shallow I was breathing before. Jase wrapped his arm around me and we just listened to the surf while the knots in my chest unraveled.

We got back in the truck, ate cheese and bread and listened to Dave Matthews. Thank you, Nantucket, for ocean air.

The Dimensionality of Air

I adore a good foggy morning. Walking through the mist, damp fingers trace my cheekbones and droplets cling, running through my hair. However, the air, no matter how thick it seems, doesn't impede me. I do not trip or stumble or battle my way along. Yet thousands of feet above the ground at hundreds of miles an hour, the air becomes a solid thing with valleys and walls, dips and waves and swells that shake the very frame of a plane like a child's toy.

As I watched the wing of our plane wobble in the mass of churning clouds, my stomach clenched every time the aircraft suddenly dropped (this was an eight-seater tiny plane) and I was struck by how insubstantial air usually is - and how thick and heavy and hard it had become. A distinct parallel experience to my emotions.

This past week has been a tornado. I hadn't seen my husband in 45 days. In the span of seven he flew home, we buried a dear friend, lost another friend's mother, learned of a cancer diagnosis of someone cherished, and threw a party with a hundred guests in our home that had been planned for over a month. (once you mail out that many invitations, there is no canceling) My emotions heaved and spun; once air, now calcified. They effected everything from my physical health, pain level, quantity of sleep, mothering skills, patience, and the amount of alcohol I consumed. How powerful feelings can be, completely against one's will.

So I've run away. Two weeks on an 'out of season' island in a beach house with no neighbors, no children, no pets. Just my husband, a fireplace, and the wind. Sometimes the tumult of life requires silence and some recalculation. Friendships have changed, trust altered, hearts broken. Here's to taking time away....to get yourself together.

14 days. This house. Nantucket. Heaven.