In Pursuit of the Past and Pasta

We’d not timed our search for dinner well.  It was 8:45 when Dave and I left the Holiday Inn, and my husband, in his joy at returning to his childhood town, waived aside the receptionist’s offer of directions and suggestions.  It had been five years since we’d been to Worcester, and we both envisioned a steaming bowl of pasta at the Italian Kitchen.

When Dave’s Aunty Cam was alive, we rarely ate out.  Why would we?  Her tomato sauce topped with crushed nuts was heavenly, and her stuffed peppers, with their filling of capers, garlic, black olives, and breadcrumbs, were similarly divine.  Somehow, when Cam was the cook, simple as it was, fresh lettuce dressed only with olive oil and lemon juice was the perfect accompaniment.  Still, sometimes for lunch, we’d head down to Shrewsbury Street, which, conveniently for us this evening, was just down the road from the Holiday Inn.

We'd come to town for Dave’s cousin Peggy's interment.  In November, we'd heard from her daughters  that she was not doing well, so we went to visit.  She was couch-bound, thin, and tired, but her dark eyes still flashed with spirit as she joined in telling tales about the family, or softened while looking through old photo albums.  I like to picture her in some ethereal kitchen, chatting with Cam as they make that heavenly sauce together.  

Dave has been nostalgic about his native city lately, perhaps because of Peggy's passing and that visit to the past through stories and photos.  When we made plans for the trip North, he said, "Let's go a day early and spend a little time there." So we arrived Sunday afternoon, took our time getting settled, and then realized we were starving.

In our search for food, we passed a low structure on the curve to Shrewsbury Street. Dave said, “Used to be D’Elriccos.”  He gave a hoot of satisfaction when the sign in the window still had the same name.  Up ahead, we spotted the red brick building that had housed the Italian Kitchen, noted the new name, “Piccolo,” but figured it still sounded like a place to get pasta.  So we parked the car at the side of the road, climbed out, and fighting quiet discouragement at the lack of activity, tried the door.  Locked.  We cupped our eyes with our hands and peered in the window to see a young woman piling wooden chairs on empty tables.

“Oh well.  No problem.  Let’s hit the Parkway.”

We wanted to eat someplace where Dave had a sense of connection, of history.  I could easily picture Dave’s dad, Colombo, seated at one of the stools at the Parkway Diner, digging into a plate of sausage n’ peppers.  And for me, having grown up believing I didn’t like eggplant because my mother didn’t, the Parkway was a culinary education.  There was nothing like their eggplant parmigiana sandwich with its generous sliced eggplant, tangy red sauce, and melted mozzarella on thick slabs of Italian bread.

We drove down the block, took a U-Turn, and pulled up to the curb outside the diner.  Again, we parked, dismounted, and tried the latch.  Success!  The door opened to the raucous laughter of a crowd of young people in jeans, sweatshirts, and Red Sox caps.

“You want food or drink?”  asked the cute bartender with a flip of her ponytail.

“Food!  A bowl of pasta! And drink!” we crowed.

The girl cocked her head and bit her lower lip in apology.  “Mmmm.  Sorry.  Kitchen just closed.”

“Noooo…” Dave and I wailed in mock despair.  Dave checked his watch: 9:02.  Wow.  Prompt group.

With a sigh, Dave asked for recommendations, which set off a flurry of discussion between the bartender and her pleasant, but scruffy, patrons. 

“Vita’s,” said one.

“No.  No way.  Not Vita’s,” the bartender was adamant.

“Why not?”

“Not my favorite.”

            .

“Hah!  You’re Irish!  What do you know about Italian food?”  retorted a man, puffing his chest at the approving guffaws of those around him.

The bartender leaned from the waist, arms flung wide, eyes sparking in mock fury, “I WORK in an Italian place!”  She did not say, “so stuff it,” but that was implied.  She turned to us and said, “Try Jimmy’s Tavern.  Up at White City.  Know where it is?”

“Shame on me if I don’t,” said Dave.  It was clear by his bright grin that he was tempted to stay, pleased with the atmosphere, the camaraderie, and the boisterous exchange, food or not.  “How ‘bout one drink?” he said to me.

“Hon, we have to eat…” Okay, so maybe I was a little whiny.

 Dave nodded, but called over his shoulder, “Save us a seat!  We’ll be back!”

Time was passing as we drove down Shrewsbury Street.  It was 9:15.  “This mall we’re going to – White City?  Used to be an amusement Park,” Dave said. 

I knew this.  Dave and I have been together for forty years, so I have a vague sense of the fields where he played Little League, the fields where he knew baseball glory, and yes, even landmarks that were not part of his baseball career.

Dave took the right into White City and we circled and circled and circled the sprawling parking lot encircled with the same stores that encircle most every sprawling parking lot in the country.  Finally we spotted Jimmy’s prominent sign, right next to the entrance we’d come in at the start of our circling.  We were hungry…and  getting tired.

Inside Jimmy’s, servers were straightening up and most of the tables were empty.  Still, a gangly youth greeted us cheerfully and, preparing to seat us, picked up two menus.  Dave apologized for the late hour and said we’d be quick; we just wanted a bowl of pasta.  The man’s eyes shadowed a touch.  “Well.  We have several varieties of mac n’ cheese…?” he offered hopefully.

Dave cannot eat mac n’ cheese.

“If you want pasta, your best bet would be Buca di Beppo, just down the way.”  We’d actually passed it, noted the very obvious Italian name, but in our fatigue and focus on Jimmy’s, had driven on. 

It was really late now:  9:30.  Back on the road, we drove the brief distance to Buca, parked in the lot, and noted the marble statue of a maiden by the front door, the festive strings of lights, and the lake behind the building. 

But again, the door was locked.  A couple came out, clutching a white plastic parcel of leftovers and before it closed, Dave ducked in the door behind them.

“Honey….” I whined again, exasperated, but he was out of sight.  I stood, waiting, the maiden at my side. 

Almost immediately, the door re-opened and a thin young man in a black tee-shirt emerged to trot across the parking lot in pursuit of the departing couple.  “Excuse me!  Your leftovers….” He said, and gave the man yet another container of food. 

The server walked back toward the building, the maiden, and me, and tried the door.  “Locked myself out,” he said with a shrug.  “I can get in through the back.”

“You’re a good soul to go to that trouble with the leftovers,” I said as he turned to walk around the restaurant.

“Well thanks,” he said, smiling.  “‘A good soul.’  I like that.”

Just then, Dave poked his head out the front door.  “Come on in.  They said they’d feed us.”

“Oh Honey.  They’re cleaning up. They want to go home.”  I felt sheepish, a little annoyed. 

“Really.  I didn’t ask.  They offered.”

“Still, we shouldn’t do this.  We’ll feel rushed and have to eat fast…”

I expected tension when we entered the main dining room, but no.  The staff was bustling about rolling napkins and utensils for the following day, nudging chairs back in place, and eating their own meals, but everyone smiled at us.  A hostess armed with menus appeared, and beaming welcome, led us to a table covered with a brown and white checked cloth. 

I blathered apologies and regrets, but she assured me, “Really, it’s no problem.  Your server will be with you shortly.  Enjoy your dinner.”

We were the only customers in an extraordinary, spacious, two-tiered space. Three arches spanned the room, each decorated with paintings of lemons and pears.  Photographs crammed every inch of the cranberry colored walls: Frank Sinatra, the Pope, and JFK side by side with someone’s grandmother, nuns riding Dodgem cars, the Colosseum, the Forum, and St. Peter’s Cathedral.  Jimmy Durante chuckled and crooned in the background when Sinatra took a break, and the young man I met in the parking lot came to take our orders. 

“I didn’t catch your name,” Dave said.

The man pointed to a nametag on his shirt, “Donnie.”  He chuckled.  “I covered the word ‘meat’ with the tag…See? ‘Balls as big as your head.” The three of us laughed, and he added, “They’re really good.  The meatballs.  Chef just made ‘em.”

I said they sounded great, but explained we don’t eat meat. Promising we’d eat quickly, we ordered our long-awaited bowls of pasta, a beer, and a glass of Chianti.  

“No rush,” said Donnie.  “We have things to do to get ready for tomorrow anyway.  Besides, tonight I feel like a good soul,” and he smiled at me. 

Shortly, huge bowls, HUGE bowls, of steaming pasta were placed before us, along with a basket of thick-sliced bread and olive oil for dipping.  Dave and I touched our glasses, toasted Donnie, and grinned. 

Ram Dass said, “We are all here to walk each other home.”  It is my new favorite quote, a “Do Unto Others” without the wag of the finger. A reminder that kindness serves all.  When we were tired and hungry, Donnie and the other good souls of Buca di Beppo  - who were, no doubt, more tired and hungry than we were – took us in, welcomed and fed us.  And we were warmed and filled by far more than pasta.

                      

Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To

 

 “Are those termite holes?”  Gary looked concerned, given that the massive beam in question was clearly instrumental in supporting the floor above us.

“Yeah,” I replied, reaching up to break off a jagged piece of the hole-peppered wood to demonstrate just how brittle that section of beam was. 

 “Whoa.  Can’t be good,” Gary said, unnerved.

I relented in my cruel little game and explained, “When my husband Dave and I bought this house, the building inspector told us he could drive a key into this beam and still find more solid wood at its core than in a house newly-built.”  My companion nodded, relieved, and brushed aside a swag of cobweb as he turned to inspect the hot water heater. 

For that was our purpose in the basement.  The furnace and hot water heater – one, a cast-iron behemoth hulking in the deep shadows, the other a massive beige cylinder – are old.  Not as ancient as our 1782 house, but they’ve done their time.  They have squatted below for twenty-four years, thrumming audibly to life to keep us warm as long as we've been here.  The furnace is checked and cleaned annually and in recent years I’ve been told, “She’s good for maybe three more years. ’Course, could go in a year.  Hard to say.”  Love that uncertainty.

So, Dave and I decided to be pro-active rather than wait for a furnace blow-back to darken our walls and furniture with soot (as had happened to the prior owner), or a water heater leak to spew rivers across the basement floor.  The furnace will be replaced later, once the weather warms up. “Let’s wait just in case there’s a glitch,” Dave said.  “It’d be just our luck the new one would fail during a cold spell.” 

So the furnace is on hold, but I called the utility company to request a visit regarding the hot water heater.  I was told it was not their policy to come out unless there was a leak. She said ours was an 80-gallon unit installed in 2003.

“Mm, don’t think so,” I said.  “It was here in 1990 when we moved in, and it is definitely a 120 gallon unit.”

“That’s not what our records indicate.”  The woman was pleasant, but firm.  And wrong. 

I’m not sure why I thought to mention it to her, but our cats had shredded the heater’s insulation wrapper and the tall beige cylinder stood nearly naked, strips of pink fiberglass batting hanging from her sides like rags on a beggar.

“Oh!  Well!  That’s a problem, isn’t it? We’ll send someone out to take a look!”  Chipper, agreeable, helpful.  Within two days, I got a call, and Gary was at the door.

I liked him immediately.  He was tall and wiry with close-cropped curly hair and glasses, a New Englander who would have been right at home in a town meeting in the eighteenth century.  And a man who admired a stalwart unit such as the one in our basement.  He directed his flashlight at a metal plate on the back of the heater and guffawed.  “Look at this! This number indicates the year it was manufactured – 1966! This girl’s almost fifty years old!”  He chuckled to himself in noting the information on his clipboard; the information I’d been given over the phone.  “2003.  Right.”

I gave him my spiel about being pro-active in seeking to replace the unit, but added, “It’s served us well.  We’ve always had as much hot water as we needed.”

“They built  ‘em to last back then,” Gary said.  “Don’t count on fifty years with the new one, but this is a disaster waiting to happen. We’ve got to get it out immediately.”

I felt foolishly smug that I’d been right in forcing this visit, but also, a little sad.  Seriously?  Over a metal cylinder?  Yes.  I am prone to personification and somehow, these two warm-hearted monoliths in our basement seemed like old soldiers, guardians who had served us faithfully all these years.  And they don’t make ‘em like they used to.  Was it a mistake to cast them aside even as they hummed away, doing their jobs as they always had?

Not according to Gary.  Evaluation complete, we climbed the basement stairs and stopped in the kitchen while Gary leaned on the counter to fill out the paperwork.  He passed on the coffee I offered, but we chatted a bit about the forecast for another snowstorm, some property he owns in Vermont, and my mother’s 1938 Roper stove.  He shook his head at the date.  “She getting’ rid of it?” he asked.

“No way.  A couple of burners don’t work, but she’s still got three good ones and a double oven.”

“There it is again,” he said.  “Don’t make ‘em like they used to.”   He instructed me to call his office and make an appointment for the replacement, and we shook hands as he took his leave.  For some reason, I had to restrain an impulse to give him a hug.

In the days preceding removal, Dave cleared away planks of wood, paint cans, and cases of bottled water to create a path through the basement to the bulkhead. In a flurry of disrespect for our resident spiders, I swept free cobwebs festooning the ceiling beams. And on January 28, I stood in the basement, part of a semi-circular assembly around our heater, with five burly men, each almost interchangeable with the others in dark blue uniforms, woolen caps pulled low over brows, and scarves muffling chins.

“You got termites?’’ A scarf-muted voice asked.  (Must have spotted the beam.)

“Once upon a time,” I filled him in.   

Was I imagining it, or was there an air of reverence as the men considered the venerable cylinder before them?  One, obviously a soul sensitive to my mixed feelings, pried off the metal plate embossed with the unit’s vital statistics – brand, model, and serial numbers – and gave it to me before the men set to work.

I was intrigued that the new unit was hauled in first and tipped upright next to its elderly counterpart, an odd sequence as it reduced maneuver room even more.  In truth, maybe I was nettled on behalf of the 1966 model at having this shiny white upstart thrust so suddenly into its space.  

With canvas straps guiding and much grunting and bracing of shoulders, the old heater was lowered onto a red hand-truck.  Slowly, the men navigated the cylinder around the base of the chimney and lolly columns, under the stairs, past the washer-drier, and through a 29” door that barely permitted passage of the 29” unit.  Down a step the procession continued, into Dave’s music room, where guitars and empty glass wine casks lined the wall like spectators on a boulevard witnessing this final passage.

And then, a challenge: how to get past our black submarine of an oil tank wedged at the bottom of the bulkhead stairs?  As one, the men stood straight, rubbed lower backs and hands, then leaned in to ease the unit past the tank and angle it up and out…into fresh air, across the snowy lawn, onto a lift to the truck, and like an era passing, away…

P.S.  Within nine days, the new unit failed twice.  Yes.  Twice.  Somewhere out there the old 1966 model is smirking.  They don’t make ‘em like they used to.

P.P.S.  At the time of posting this blog, the new furnace has been installed.  It, too, failed within a day.  *sigh*     

Little Voices

 

Dave crouched before the stereo tinkering with the door of the cassette player with a miniature screwdriver.  It was a good thing he was the one tinkering, for if I’d been the one with the tool, that stubborn piece of plastic s@# would have been snapped off and flung across the room.

Whew.  Step back.  Despite that tirade, the sparkle and promise of Christmas has infused me this year for the first time in a while. Cancer, Newtown, and my father’s passing colored recent holidays, but, along with Casey and her boyfriend PJ, our son Tucker and his wife Lisa will be home this December.  This is a treat as they are now on a four-year rotation as two families (four actually) vie for this beloved couple over the holidays.

So I started early, taking out Santas that spend the off-season in a wooden jelly cupboard that once belonged to my grandmother.  Over the past two decades, I’ve moved those Santas in and out of that cupboard annually, so how did I miss the small black plastic box tucked in the back corner?  Yes, it was behind a wooden decoy from Mom and Dad’s old house in Vermont, and yes, a stuffed vampire teddy bear obscured it some, but still.  For twenty years I’d searched for the box, once purchased at Korvettes or Caldors or some other chain store now out of business.

When Tucker and Casey were tiny, there were no iPhones or Flip cameras.  In 1983 or so, Dave purchased a two-piece contraption, which claimed portability by virtue of a heavy shoulder strap, but the hand-held camera was huge and the video player ungainly.  But we had our kids’ childhoods to capture, so we lugged that thing out on vacations, to playgrounds, and during holiday events.  Before that get-up, all we had was a tape recorder.

Tucker was three and Casey an infant when we recorded our son singing “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.”  Casey would chime in with a squall or coo, but during the recorder-only era, it was largely Tucker’s show.  Sometime around our move to Easton, the tapes disappeared.  Precious as they were, I knew I hadn’t thrown them out; someday, they’d turn up.

At the glimpse of black plastic, my heart leapt.  I reached to the back of the cupboard and pulled out the case.  It was dusty, maybe six and a half inches high and four inches deep, with six drawers, each with once-white Scotch labels now flecked with brown stains.  I pressed the square red buttons at the end of each drawer.  Nothing.  Pushed the drawers, nothing. Really?  Finally I have the box in hand, and I’m flummoxed by an antiquated system of plastic and springs?  I squinted at the buttons and noted an arrow.  Pushed in and up, and the drawer slid out with a snap to reveal a white plastic tape and Dave’s faded handwriting, “Tucker – Sept-Oct, 1980.”

Five drawers contained tapes, each a sliver of our young selves and our children.  “Tucker – Dec. ’81,” “Tucker – Dec. 1982: ‘The Night Before Christmas,’” “Kids,” and “Casey – August 1983.”  It was an odd feeling, holding them in my hand, not wanting to hope for much in case the tapes had degraded, but still feeling the tingle of possibility that I held living moments with my babies, moments when Dave and I were young and Tucker and Casey were so completely ours. 

“Dave!  I found them!  Those tapes of the kids!  Do we have a cassette player?”  Not a sure bet, for the era of cassettes is long past. 

Dave barreled in from the kitchen where he’d been making bread.  He paused and thought, then said,  “We do!  I think we do…”

Together, we kneeled on the living room floor in front of the stereo, and pondered its components, four black metal devices, each by a different manufacturer: Radio Shack, Denon, Onkyo, and Sony, not to mention the rarely-used turntable by Technics.  Triumph.  The black box by Denon housed a cassette player.

Dave selected a tape and placed it in the compartment.  In wonder, we listened to the whir as the tape rewound.  Afraid to watch it spin, fearing a tear and tangle, I gazed out the window to the backyard, the vibrant green and red of spiked holly leaves and berries framing my view of November browns and grays. 

Rewind complete, Dave hit “play.”  Nothing.  Tried again.  Nothing.  He pushed the eject button, and nothing happened.  The cassette stayed put.  Omigod.  The past, our past, on a flippet of plastic trapped inside the unrelenting compartment of an obsolete Denon tape player.  Enter the screwdriver, tinkering, removal of tape, insertion of tape, and any number of jabs at the “play” button. 

What makes one jab better than another?  For suddenly, a high-pitched breathy voice, two-year-old Tucker’s voice, filled the room.  With glee, he sang “Baa Baa Black Sheep” and “Hickory Dickory Dock.”  Nursery rhymes!  Of course we taught him nursery rhymes, although I barely remember them now. 

At times, it was hard to understand him and in the background, young Lea said, “not so close to the microphone, Tuck.”  And my boy, the freshie, not so different then from now, moved closer, his voice booming from the Denon, as his parents, both young and old, chuckled in 1982 and 2013.  I pictured those wide brown eyes, soft kissable cheeks, bowl-cut hair, and beaming smile and yearned to corral that happy little one into my arms.

Then thirty-two year old Dave, his voice loving and patient, cued Tucker, “Twas the night before …..”

“CHRISTMAS!”  Tucker crowed, and he was off, his voice rising and falling with the cadence of the poem as he took us all through the house, past mama in her kerchief, to a commotion on the lawn, and a spectacle in the sky.  “On Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Cupid and Dasher and Comet and Prancer,” called Tucker, repeating names until Santa had a full squadron of reindeer.  Young Dave commented in the background, “Seems to be a skip on the tape.” 

“Skip on the tape?”  Tucker asked, but then rattled along, landing Santa in the fireplace with an emphatic “Bumpf!” I smiled at the “bumpf,” a sound effect I add to this day, hearing in Tuck’s recitation his storytellers as well as his tale. 

I looked at my Dave on the floor by the stereo, his legs stretched out before him. His smile was broad even as he wiped tears from his cheeks, and I snuffled into a now-damp tissue while beaming at Tucker’s voice.  Who else but Dave would hear and see what I hear and see in listening to this tape?  Our minds’ eyes together in that time, seeing each other and grinning at our boy.

      

   

         

Doors Wide

-->*Note:  The following is an excerpt from a book I am writing about my cancer experience in 2009, so no worries; cancer references are past, past, past!

I wish I'd purchased an Advent calendar this year.  When I was little, the wait for Christmas day was agonizing in time’s slow crawl, and each miniature paper door marked a step forward, progress made toward the bliss of ripping off the wrappings and ribbons masking the presents under the tree.

             

Mystery beckoned in rectangular boxes, those deep enough to hold a doll.  Such packages were eyed with near lust, turned, treasured, and checked for heft.  Long flat boxes that rustled when shaken were shoved aside.  Probably clothes.  But… maybe not.  Nothing could be totally dismissed because one couldn’t really tell.  That was part of the exquisite pleasure.

             

Sometimes I would lie on my stomach beneath our Christmas tree’s fragrant pine limbs, haloed by glowing multi-colored lights, my chin resting on my hands.  While I yearned to know what lay concealed in the surrounding parcels, I also sought to transport myself to the scene captured in carved wooden figures in the crèche tucked at the tree’s base.  I’d close my eyes and seek the chill of night under a black velvet sky in Bethlehem. I strove to conjure steaming breath puffed from soft nostrils, bristly camel fur, wide brown cow eyes fringed with dark lashes.  The scent of hay and manure.  Rough men drawing ragged robes tight over sinewy shoulders.  And always, a radiance around a young mother holding her baby. 

             

When Tucker and Casey were born, Dave and I regained the magic of the season.  Santa resumed prominence on Christmas Eve, and now, decades later, so easily can I picture Tucker in red feet-pajamas and toddler Casey in a red flannel mop cap and nightie, both children dancing with excitement as they listened for sleigh bells.  Oh, the anticipation in reading “The Night Before Christmas” and setting out Santa’s snacks!  I still have the notes the kids’ wrote to him, their words spidery and crooked, haphazard on the page, with polite inquiries about Santa’s summer and sleigh ride, an invitation to cookies and milk, and the list of toy requests, lengthy enough to require parental help to transcribe them.  The passage of days to that night were a joyful march of projects, seasonal stories, baking, loving secrets, and the glitter-bright promise of Advent calendar doors to open every morning.

             

Having marked the past four months with chemo infusions, completion of each treatment was cause for celebration, as sure as opening doors #1, 2, and 3. In My Grandfather’s Blessings, Rachel Naomi Remen writes of her grandfather’s belief that, “To be alive was to wait for the will of God to reveal itself.  And one waited with curiosity.  A sense of adventure.” A sense that the next day, behind the next door, might be…who knows?  A doll?  A puppet? New hair? A healthy body?  How my wishes have changed!

             

At this point, I feel a giddy bubbling inside.  I no longer have the chemo countdown, and ahead lies the return of energy, taste, enjoyment of food, my hair.  By January, I should have about a half inch, by March, a pixie cut.  Well, a sparse pixie cut.  By May, my wig – for which I have been so grateful – will be relieved of duty.

             

Until then, there are presents to buy, the tree to decorate, parties to attend, the kids coming home.  So many blessings, and I awake each day giving thanks for the potential it holds. 

             

Next year, I am definitely getting an Advent calendar.

* Yet another note:  This year, I have one, and it's a beauty!

Circle Unbroken

We heard their laughter and the lyrical rhythm of island accents before we saw them.   Two women - one with red lipstick and long hair, the other with corn rows tight against her scalp, both with cocoa skin - had struggled to sit atop a massive boulder on the lawn below the lighthouse and above the sea. Their male companion stood before them, holding a camera at arm’s length. Happy people on a glorious day, I thought and smiled to myself at their joy.

 “Would you like a picture of the three of you?’  Dave asked.  Naturally, they were delighted by his offer.

After they’d checked out Dave’s shots from their perch on the rock, the woman in cornrows, Ann-Marie, I soon learned, twisted toward me and said, “Is he a photographer?  Just has a way….”

Her friend, Maxine, slid to the ground and strolled over to where I sat nearby on the grass. “We have reason to celebrate,” she volunteered.  She nodded toward Ann-Marie and said quietly, “A year ago, I was with her when she had surgery.”

A few years back, I would have left it at that, but since I’ve had cancer and Ann-Marie is a woman, I said, “What kind of surgery?”  Given the statistics, it was almost a formality.

“Breast cancer,” she replied, and the sadness is, I wasn’t surprised.

When Ann-Marie joined us, I told her of our bond and hailed her as a sister.  Her nice-stranger-smile deepened to one of connection, and she hugged me tight, a hug infused with shared fear, relief, hope, and gratitude, then she settled to the grass next to me, just barely loosening her hold. 

I was half in her lap, my hand in hers, as the five of us spoke for close to an hour.  “During diagnosis and treatments, it was the circle of love that kept me going,” Ann-Marie said as she smiled at Maxine.  “The circle of love is essential.”  With our hands still clasped, her eyes locked on mine, she added, “There is no coincidence in our being here, together, in this place.”  And I knew she drew strength from our companionship in cancer, just as I had from Joanne, Dede, and Wendy.  The disease and fear might have been ours to fight as individuals, but we were not alone.

Nor were Dave and I alone this weekend; we had a date on the hill above New Harbor, so it was time to mount up.  Dave took group pictures, we exchanged emails and hugs, our three new friends headed to the lighthouse for a tour, and Dave and I retrieved our bikes for the ride back to the hill.

 For over a decade, our September Block Island gathering has served as escape and celebration. In 2008, the route to Point Judith was tagged with evacuation signs and cars, countless cars, heading the opposite direction as a hurricane blew in.  Did we postpone?  No!  Otie and Janet made the trip from Pittsburgh a day early just in case, and our Connecticut contingent barreled ahead, thrilled at the prospect of howling winds and pounding surf.  There was one brief moment on the way up, after we’d passed the third evacuation sign, when I thought, are we being stupid about this?  Forget about it!  All aboard!

In 2009, the weekend fell during my second round of chemo-loser days.  I’d just lost my hair and felt logy and sad, plus it was windy and rainy and I worried about errant gusts stealing my scarf.  Dave had thrown out his back and we were a gimpy, pathetic pair – not our usual BI selves.  The Friday ferries were cancelled, so we made the crossing on Saturday; the rest of the group – Hallie, Buck, Steve, Deb, Len, Mary, Otie, Janet, and Joan – had taken an earlier boat.  They met us at the dock, a receiving line of loving friends.  They relieved us of our backpacks, and Dave and I rented a mo-ped, a motorized means to free-wheeling, so we could keep up.

Every year, on the Friday of departure, there’s the ordeal of the white-knuckled drive down I-95, zipping along at 15 mph through rush hour traffic to make the last ferry.  Once that ferry pulls from the pier, however, there is water between us and …everything else.  Water between us and worry.  Water between us and doctors.  Water between us and the ability to take care of to-dos, commitments, and concerns. Through Steve’s diagnosis, Colombo’s strokes, hurricanes, and my cancer, Block Island has been gloriously and blessedly AWAY.

I hesitate to speak to my Sylvestros of God, but this weekend, that of Steve and Debby’s 40^th anniversary, I sensed His hand in the brilliance of the sun, meadows of golden rod glowing yellow, sapphire seas, and blue skies swirled with playful wisps of clouds, a setting fit to honor four decades of marriage.  

By the time Dave and I pedaled up, most of the others were on the hill, spreading blankets on the grass, hauling a ponderous picnic table to a level spot, opening bags of chips - tortilla and potato - and the requisite containers of hummus.  While mudslides – a frozen chocolate/coffee/rum confection– are always the drink of choice, Hallie was also chilling champagne.

What would be the afternoon’s format?  No one was sure.  While this time together on the hill was a given, the anniversary layer was uncertain.  A few weeks before, Deb mentioned to a few of us her wish to renew her wedding vows.  “When we got married, I said the words I was supposed to say, but I was a kid. I didn’t get it.  Now I do.  It’s not always easy.  You have to work things through.  It really is ‘in sickness and in health.’ After forty years, I know about commitment.  I’ve lived what I vowed.”

Steve, I’d heard, was not so sure about the renewal of vows piece, but he’d bought Deb – forty years later – an engagement ring, and today, he would present it. 

Others had planned their own presentations.  Moo had flown in from New Mexico, her first trip to the Block.  She’d done some research on traditional 40^th anniversary gifts and had something hidden under a sweatshirt in her bike basket.  Nelson and his wife Ann had also joined us, and Nelson had worked with the island to create an appropriate gift. 

Steve and Deb’s son, Trevor, had thought the celebration was the next day.  Oops.  So, as the rest of us chatted and sipped mudslides, Trevor sat eyes and fingers to phone, working on his toast while his wife, Lisa, and soon-to-be-three daughter, Ava, spilled packets of colorful sand on paper, preparing a bee-u-ti-ful picture. 

Because Dave is an online-ordained minister of the Church of Spiritual Humanism, a justice of the peace, and Steve’s brother, he was chosen to orchestrate events, whatever those events might be.  After Ava changed into a pale blue princess gown and donned long pink gloves with the help of two young courtiers enlisted at the playground, Dave rose to chorale our attention. 

Until he spoke, we were scattered, small groups on blankets facing this way and that, but when Dave began to speak, we naturally formed a circle, a circle of love.  Deb and Steve were the focus, at the head of the circle, but in a circle, actually, there is no head, so all the words spoken of lasting love and friendship were spoken for all of us, everyone in that circle. 

Steve’s white mane, Deb’s river of blond hair, a circle of sunglasses, a circle of soul-deep smiles that have beamed at each other and at these two people for most of those four decades.  There have been losses, hospitals, worry and nursing homes, but there’s been traying at Trinity, cheering at races, work at Eagle Hill, hunkering down for hurricanes, dancing at Captain Nick’s, trips home for the holidays, weddings, Trevor and Christopher’s concerts, strumming guitars, playing with Ava, and this shared weekend on the Block.  How does that translate into words?

We tried… with laughter, stories, tears, and hands to hearts.  We spoke of Steve and Deb’s love, their courage, their example, and their role in bringing us all together.  Dave, who accompanied Steve and Deb on most of their dates and followed Steve to high school, college, and Eagle Hill, relayed a dream in which Carolyn, our recently departed friend, told Dave “True love is a gift,” thus giving him his message for this day.  With great ceremony, Moo unwrapped her offering: an eggplant engraved with “Happy 40^th Anniversary.”  Nelson unveiled a rock-solid symbol of love, a rock, in fact, found on the beach, shaped like a heart, and signed by each person in the circle. 

Trevor waited until everyone else had said their piece, then mused aloud, “How do I say thank you for all the love and caring over the years?  How do I repay all the sporting events, girlfriend advice and all the hours you lost when I was late coming home (or would fail even to come home)? What can I give you for all the times you supported me in my triumphs, and provided a shoulder when there were losses? What present is there for all the times we just sat together and shared…whatever? How do I thank you for the guidance when I was unsure of my way, and your restraint to allow me to find it myself? You nurtured my growth, yet allowed me my independence. So… what gift is enough for two kickass parents?

The answer came to me today. And no box can hold it, no wrapping can cover it.  No store had it on a shelf. My gift is not to you, it is to my little girl. I promise to care for her the same way you did for me.

              

And someday, just maybe she'll say, ‘How can I thank you -- for all you've done for me?’
              

Hopefully I get the chance to tell her, ‘Don't thank me. Thank your Mimi and Poppy. Because I'm the product of their love.’”

Whooshhhhhh.  Tears.  Tears around the circle.  Every one of us wiping eyes and cheeks as Steve and Deb reached out to their boy for hugs.  And then, thank God, Deb requested a bathroom break before the boys brought out guitars to sing.  Trevor called his brother Christopher, in Arizona, who spoke to his parents and sang along via speakerphone, as Otie, Dave, and Trevor played the Wedding Song, as it had been played at the marriage forty years before. 

And that would be a good place to end, a moving place, but Nelson emptied and upended a beige plastic ice bucket, now a drum, and joined the musicians.  Steve whipped out his harmonica and Len scrolled through words on his cell for round two of the festivities: Sloop John B, The Boxer, and Shanty.  A gleeful blond princess whirled to the music, arms outstretched as her own kickass parents looked on.

 

Summer Reflections Part III - Envy?

  It is an August evening, close to 6:00, yet the sun is warm, so the beach is busy despite the dinner hour. Lying on towels, teenagers bask, text, or chat while swimmers loll in the water, rising and falling with the rhythm of the waves. Sand castles dot the beach.  Some, tide casualties, are water-rounded and misshapen, like all ruins once of man and eventually returned to earth.  But around those under construction, there are shouted directions and discussion as crews of young ones haul and dump buckets of wet sand to smooth turrets and walls into shape.

Wearing neon orange trunks that match the shade of his shovel, a small boy bends to scoop sand from a widening pit dug just beyond reach of the sea’s frothy fingers.  His baby sister, in a purple suit with criss-crossed straps, sits in the hole.  Their father, ankle-deep in water, hands on hips, gazes toward the horizon while Mom sits on her haunches, forearms on thighs, smiling at the children.

These little ones do not look like my sisters and me, but there is an aura of the sixties in the scene, and the late summer sunshine bestows a halo of sepia memory to the present.    Wistfully I imagine the three of us playing with my cousins on this same beach five decades ago, with my grandmother Byeo, Mom and Dad, Uncle Ding, and Aunt Barbara relaxing in their chairs under an umbrella.  The leap to little Tucker and Casey is even easier: the baby with her dark hair and almond eyes, the boy’s lithe form, prominent shoulder blades, and possessive stance as he surveys his work.

 

Dave and I lounge in our beach chairs, the Boston Globe and my book within reach.  Oh, we are relaxed, and it’s possible, perhaps probable, that the young parents eye us with envy.  We are enviable, with our books, drinks, and serene companionship; no kids to watch over and entertain.

How I remember lusting after such leisure while grappling with a cooler of snacks and Capri Sun juices, a diaper bag, toys, towels, and a playpen.  The playpen was absurd, of course, ungainly and unnecessary, but I was young.  Sigh.  I was young, lithe myself, with unspotted skin, and two little ones to watch over and entertain.  Even then, I recognized how precious the time was and tried, I tried, to freeze it. 

Beach days were tiring, but joyous.  Dave and I would dig, scrape and sculpt a sand car big enough to hold two diminutive drivers and keep them happy for hours.  Well, no.  Maybe for a quarter hour at best.  And then Tucker would head off, delighted to be exploring on his own, at least while within range of a quick parental jog.

Casey loved the beach, but hated bathing suits.  She’d start the day in an adorable skirted stretchy outfit, which she’d soon wriggle out of and refuse to wear.  So she’d sit on a towel, a sweet round nudie, feeding herself shovels of sand.  Our little flower. 

When the kids were a mite older, Tucker’s Crab Restaurant was a favorite activity, usually at Dave’s suggestion.  We’d clamber gingerly over mossy rocks bathed by incoming rushes of water.  Tucker and Casey would squat like frogs, peering into tide pools, feeling under stones to tug glistening purple-black mussels free from their seemingly safe nooks.  The kids would crack the shells and submerge the soft insides to entice and feed the scuttling crabs.   

Now I stretch back in my chair, a folding backpack model with a pouch big enough to hold towels, sunscreen, and snacks.  I watch the young mom as she wades into the water with the purple-suited baby on her hip.  Chubby feet hitch up as tiny toes touch chill water.  The child’s eyes are wide, uncertain, afraid, and then she squalls, as the mom dunks her up to her shoulders. Yes, I am envious of her with her little ones to watch over and entertain, but that squall prompts a flash of whiny, less enjoyable moments.  Like childbirth, I’ve forgotten most of them.     

Our current status has allowed us a summer glorious in its wanderings, flexibility, and freedom.  We attended two weddings in June, a reunion in Maine with my Farmington friends, and a gathering with Trinity friends.  We visited Charlie and Joanne in New Hampshire, Tucker and Lisa in Boston, and, a tradition we are fortunate to have every summer, spent time in Weekapaug with family. While I strive to live in the present, I’ve felt grounded in these re-connections and the reminder that I’m not just 60-year-old-Lea, but the sum of events and people, and the girl and woman I have been in relationship with them.  Each phase has held joy as well as challenges, and what a blessing to say honestly – and perhaps with a trace of wonder – I am content where I am.

Summer Reflections - Part II - Shark Week

Since her college days, our daughter Casey has loved PBS’s Shark Week.  She says her obsession with the series began as an effort to ease, or at least balance, her morbid fear of the prickly-toothed beast.  That goal has not been realized, but when Shark Week is broadcast, Casey is on the couch in front of a TV.  It was a triumphant moment when I discovered a birthday card for her last year that depicted a cartoonish shark in just that pose, remote control in hand (or in fin, I should say) gleefully exclaiming, “Yay!  It’s ME week!”  So very Casey. 

For those who do not know, this week (that of August 5) is Shark Week.  Today, as Casey and her boyfriend PJ join Dave and me on the beach in Weekapaug, from the safety of the sand, we chat about the previous night’s show and scan the expanse of ink-blue water in search of dorsal fins or ominous shadows.

“Jaws” came out soon after I graduated from Trinity College.  I’d spent the summers of my freshman and sophomore year working on Martha’s Vineyard, which is also the setting of the movie.  One of the minor characters, a young guy who enjoys a drunken romp on the beach with a shapely blond who gets chomped by a great white early in the story, also went to Trinity.  Two too many parallels for me, and I was shaken.  Shaken to the extent that, to this day, I never swim underwater without some anxiety and the “Jaws” theme drumming in my head, and I never go into the water without first surveying the seas before me.  “That won’t help you, Mom,” says Casey.  Chock full of info from last night’s show, she adds, “They’re fast.  They come right up beneath you.  You’ll never see it coming.”

Great.  Thanks Case.

Dave nibbles pistachio nuts, grins maniacally, and flips the shells into the breeze, trying to land them on his daughter.  Relaxation is not Dave’s forte and if there is not a game of some sort in play, he creates one.  “Pistachio Provocation” is a favorite and he is endlessly entertained by Casey’s good-natured annoyance as shells catch in her hair, skip off her arm, and settle on her stomach.  “You’re a child Dad. ” she says with a snort.  “Beyond irritating.”

That’ll stop him. Not.  For Dave, such an admonition is bait, if you will, akin to the scent of seal to a shark. 

 

Meanwhile, PJ has been on his phone doing research on shark attacks.  He rattles off statistics that trigger my animal rights sense of injustice.  “In 1996, 43,000 Americans were injured by toilets, and 11,000 by buckets and pails.  Only 13 were injured by sharks.    You are far more likely to be killed by a toaster than a shark,” PJ continues.  “600-700 people die each year in toaster incidents versus 20 people killed by sharks.  And domestic dogs?  50 deaths per year.  But get this, for every human killed by a shark, 2 million sharks are killed by humans.”

I have no love of sharks and wish no one a maiming by those gruesome teeth, but those numbers really piss me off.  “Whenever animals kill humans, they are branded vicious killers and hunted down.  What about the innocents we slaughter every day, all the pigs, calves, chickens and baby lambs?”

There is a pained silence.  Buzzkill.  I’ve turned a little enlightenment into a soapbox moment, but still, I think I have a point.

With sighs, we turn to gaze out to sea where we spot movement, a swimmer, as it turns out. With our eyes, we follow her path as vigorous strokes propel her toward the horizon.  Finally she swings left for a lengthy lap along the shore. With admiring nods, we applaud the woman’s courage and style, but decide her bold embrace of the sea indicates she is probably not spending evenings enthralled by tales of the gaping maw of the megaladon on PBS.