As of yet,
the violet morning glories still cling to the front porch lattice and to
summer, although we have come officially to the end of the season.
The weather
has been unseasonably warm at the summer house for late October, but we know as
native New Englanders that a sudden frost and freezing temperatures are
imminent.
During the
past few weeks we have winterized the summer house.
First we
emptied the kitchen and laundry room cabinets, filling the trunk with enough
groceries to suspend trips to the supermarket for a while.
Then I
vacuumed all the rooms, sucking out a pail of sand hidden within carpet
fibers.
Next I
lifted the window screens and dropped in all the storm windows.
Finally, we
emptied the refrigerator – a freezer-full
of hamburgers, hot dogs, sausages, steaks, and tubs of ice cream, as well as
half-filled bottles of mustard, relish, ketchup, salad dressings, barbecue
sauce, mayonnaise and pickles.
Looking
around, the place was clean and neat and sad.
What is a
summer house without friends and family sprawled on the sofa, sleeping dogs
curled at your feet, the sounds of football and baseball games blaring on the
TV, the smells of clamboils bubbling on the stove and smoky barbecues wafting
through the windows?
All that will
remain is for my husband and his friend to drain the pipes. Unable to emit heat
or light, the summer house will sit in cold and darkness, waiting in silence
for our return next spring.
One of my
favorite short stories is “The Country of the
Pointed Firs” by Sarah Orne Jewett, who tells the tale of a lone woman visitor
to a small coastal town in nineteenth-century Maine, where she bonds with the
inhabitants and leaves regrettably at the end of the season.
Every year I
feel her pain and sense of loss as we lock the door behind us.
“When I went
in again, the little house had suddenly grown lonely, and my room looked empty
as it had the day I came,” wrote Jewett. “I and all my belongings had died out
of it … So we die before our own eyes; so we see some chapters of our lives
come to their natural end.
“As I came away
on the little coastwise steamer, there was an old sea running which made the
surf leap high on all the rocky shores… Presently the wind began to blow, and
we struck out… and when I looked back again, the islands and the headland had
run together… and all its coasts were lost to sight.”
