Only the sea remains

Sea gulls gather along the icy Sakonnet River.

"The prospect of spending future summers by the sea ... is very delightful," wrote Jane Austen.

But alas, it is springtime; and the temperature in New England keeps plummeting.

Brrrr....

Leaving home, we drive to the summer house. The world around us is frozen in place. Steam rises from the Sakonnet, where the warmth is trapped beneath the waves. We climb High Hill Road, and the wind whips the windshield with airborne sand.

Taking the scenic route high above the massive stones by the water's edge, we slowly meander through the three tiny streets. Our yard is cluttered with discarded maple branches hiding under the waving boughs. Windswept grasses are an unappealing brown, clutching onto the soil.

Our boat, a Sea Pro Center Console, waits behind the house for its first outing. Plastic chairs tumble in the wind.

Suddenly, my husband hits the brakes, flings open the door and runs toward the stairs. The window in the small bedroom is missing, and the curtains billow. Finding the window on the floor unbroken, he replaces the glass in the track.

I hurry inside and immediately feel the intense cold. The oil burner refuses to roar into life, and the radiators no longer hiss and sputter.

The oil in the tank was used up, as the warm air rushed out the open window.

I call Quik Oil, LLC and order a hundred gallons of liquid gold.

Then I settle into my favorite chair, wrap myself in a blanket and grab a book off the shelf, while my husband grabs a beer, mutters under his breath and storms out the door.

 

Julie Klassen writes in "The Sisters of Seaview": "When evening falls, ... the beach empties, the fishermen return to their cottages, the tourists to their hotels, and refreshment sellers to their shops, like birds to their nesting places. Then only the sea remains, tides rising and falling but always there, as constant as their Creator."

Sunshine is delicious

“Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather,” wrote English writer and philosopher John Ruskin.

On this unseasonably cold day, it is a different kind of good weather at the summer house, and I wonder where the warmth went.

All summer the sun was a torch, singeing these three tiny streets by the sea in our little corner of New England. Yet what seems like a blink of an eye, October brought her pounding rains and plummeting temperatures, drawing us inside while lamenting season’s end.

But Ruskin is right. Fogland beckons no matter the weather; and with this kind of thinking, it is always a fun day at the beach.

Gathering inside the summer house offers new perspective. After cranking up the thermostat, I sit by the window, taking in the view from the inside out.

Quintessentially New England, the foliage is tinted in shades of reds, yellows, browns and greens, as the leaves levitate in the brisk breeze.

Despite the windows being closed, one can still hear the soughing of the sea, which is the rhythm of life in these parts.

In a space like this, quiet permeates everything; and the senses discern the tinniest sounds from a gull’s distant cry to the buzz of a bee.

The violet morning glories cling perilously to the porch, wrapping around the railings, holding on for dear life.

I hear the sound of a hammer reverberating, as a workman dangles from staging on the peak of a three-story house, replacing shingles from a recent storm.

But most of my neighbors are tucked inside. I see no cars passing by, although I spot a woman walking her little white dog as she braves the constant wind.

Then a violent sound eclipses the solitude. My husband starts the lawn mower, which blocks out everything. The noise is deafening, but the intrusion is necessary. After the rains this past week, the lawn mushroomed.

Getting up, I grab the afghan my mother made from the back of the couch and wrap myself in its comforting warmth.

Reaching up, I slide a book off the shelf.

Another fun day at the beach…

At home in the Colonies

A Saturday in New England at the summer house, my husband is mowing the lawn; and I am thinking about life across the pond. The passing of the beloved Queen Elizabeth II at 96 brings to mind a delightful 93-year-old lady whom I had the pleasure to interview at the beginning of my career, working as a food correspondent for a daily newspaper. Born in Lancashire, England, Nancy spoke with an inimitable British accent and was the oldest resident in the city's high rise apartment building, where she had lived for 16 years. At home in her cozy living room, she reminisced about her childhood in England, the many years she spent working in a cotton mill as a weaver, and of her work as a housekeeper. "I haven't had an easy life," she said. "I went to work at 11 and worked until I was 85. But I've had a happy life." Like many young English girls of her time, Nancy was besotted with the bachelor playboy Prince Charles. "I wouldn't have minded his slippers being underneath my bed," said the nonagenarian widow with a twinkle in her eye. Her childhood memories were filled with delicious foods she enjoyed in England. "I can still remember the smell of dabs frying," she said. Dabs are parboiled potatoes that are dipped in batter and fried in deep fat until crisp and golden brown. "You could buy them on almost every street corner," she said wistfully. Nancy attributed her love for cooking to her mum. "My mother was a marvelous cook," she said. "She always made the traditional meat puddings, potato pies and rice puddings. I still make them, I still live the English way." Nancy said she had a friend who always called the day before she planned to visit. "She wanted to make sure that I had plenty of time to make her favorite potato pie," Nancy said mischievously. Every evening Nancy had a cup of English Breakfast tea with either toast, some of her homemade cookies or crumpets. Her recipe for oatmeal cookies came from one of her mum's old recipe books, "The Modern Priscilla Cook Book." Its cover reads: "One thousand recipes tested and proved at the Priscilla Proving Plant for Great Britain and the Colonies. DABS 2 or 3 medium potatoes, flour, water, 1 teaspoon vinegar, deep fat for frying: Boil potatoes for 5 minutes. Peel and slice. To make batter: combine flour and enough water to make a thin paste. Add vinegar. Dip potatoes in batter. Fry in deep fat until golden brown. OATMEAL COOKIES 1 cup brown sugar, 1 cup shortening, 2 eggs, 1/2 cup sweet milk, 3/4 teaspoon baking soda, 2 cups flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 2 cups of rolled oats, 1 teaspoon vanilla: Cream sugar and shortening together. Add alternately beaten eggs and milk, and dry ingredients sifted together. Add vanilla. Drop by teaspoonfuls on greased cookie sheet. Bake at 375 degrees for 10 minutes.

Summer by the Sea

A midsummer morning, I search the summerhouse bookshelves for the short novel "The Country of the Pointed Firs" by Sarah Orne Jewett. She tells the story of a lone female visitor who arrives at the small coastal town called Dunnet Landing in nineteenth-century Maine, where she finds lodging with the widowed Mrs. Todd, a herbalist. One hundred and forty pages later, we never learn the lady's name. The opening paragraphs of the book capture the joy of anticipation we feel as we begin a summer vacation in a fetching spot. "There was something about the coast town ... which made it seem more attractive than other maritime villages ... Perhaps it was the simple fact of acquaintance with that neighborhood which made it so attaching, and gave such interest to the rocky shore and dark woods, and the few houses which seemed to be securely wedged and tree-nailed in among the ledges... When one really knows a village like this and its surroundings, it is like becoming acquainted with a single person. The process of falling in love at first sight is as final as it is swift in such a case, but the growth of true friendship may be a lifelong affair." We imagine the view, the perfect place to think, write, paint or simply do nothing at all... "On the brink of the hill stood a little white schoolhouse, much wind-blown and weather-beaten, which was a landmark to seagoing folk; from its door there was a most beautiful view of sea and shore. The summer vacation now prevailed, and after finding the door unfastened, and taking a long look through one of the seaward windows, and reflecting afterward for some time in a shady place among the bayberry bushes, ... I hired the schoolhouse for the rest of the vacation for fifty cents a week." Hear the shutters wobbling back and forth that mimic the wind and waves. Sit at the teacher's desk and see the sheep wander out of a fairytale. "Selfish as it may appear, the retired situation seemed to possess great advantages, and I spent days there quite undisturbed with the sea-breeze blowing through the small high windows and swaying the heavy outside shutters to and fro. I hung my hat and luncheon-basket on an entry nail as if I were a small scholar, but I sat at the teacher's desk as if I was that great authority, with all the timid empty benches in rows before me. Now and then an idle sheep came and stood for a long time looking at the door." Gather with family and friends at the annual reunion. Have a summertime feast, swim, share memories, laugh... "Twas pretty when they sang the hymn, wasn't it?" asked Mrs. Blackett at suppertime, with real enthusiasm... I saw that Mrs. Todd's broad shoulders began to shake. "There was good singers there; yes there was excellent singers," she agreed heartily, putting down her teacup, "but I chanced to drift alongside Mis' Peter Bowden o' Great Bay, an' I couldn't help thinkin' if she was as far out o'town as she was out o'tune, she wouldn't get back in a day." Spend a few hours with a good book by the sea, and embark on a summer odyssey.

A time for every season

  

 

 We are back but irrevocably changed.

"Shaken off our social foundations by a global calamity, an invisible virus we could not see coming, we each found ourselves at the end of certainty and the beginning of faith," writes Joan Chittister in The Monastic Heart. "But where can we start to become what we know, down deep, ourselves to be -- spiritual seekers in search of a way through a serious period, an astounding eruption of normalcy in our lives?"

Climbing the well-worn stairs of the front porch to the accompaniment of birdsong, I insert the key into the lock of the old wooden door, and enter into a new season, unlike any other. Overhead, seagulls circle, and the red maple is about to explode into leaf.

The summer house is asleep, but now it yawns and stirs. It's time to throw open the windows and clear the cobwebs. Listen and you can hear the siren's call, the ancient song of the sea, waves crashing in cadence to the Master's beat.

This is the place where the stuff of childhood and contemporary life intersect. It is forever springtime in childish musings, yet altered by the last two winters of our discontent. 

There is much work to do. Sprinkled like flour, a thin layer of dust blankets every surface. Pushing up the old windows and sliding them into worn slots takes a great show of strength. The freezer door is stuck and needs defrosting. A kitchen towel drawer is dotted with mouse droppings. As the well begins to pump, water circulates like blood through veins. Opening the kitchen faucet, brownish water pulses for five minutes straight, before it clears.

Lying dormant, the summer house has waited patiently for the sound of children playing, the whirr of the lawnmower, the hum of the refrigerator, the play by play of a Red Sox game, and most of all, the gathering of family and friends filling every nook and cranny of the place with laughter.

But right now I alone herald this new and unknown season. I sit in my favorite chair and ponder the future while acknowledging the uncertainty of a return to life as we know it.

Ultimately, we are spiritual seekers traveling on the road of life. We lift our burdens, and despite stumbling, we amble on…

Daffodils dance in the wind along the stone wall.

Red maple buds are ready to burst into leaf.

A day in my life - 9/11/2001

 

America is under attack, and I want to hide under my desk in my cubicle. But instead I stand with the other reporters in front of the TV. None of us speak. Two commercial passenger jets hijacked from Logan Airport in Boston struck the World Trade Center. How? Why?  I see Manhattan burning, the Twin Towers reduced to rubble, thousands of people running through smoke-filled streets. A third jet hits the Pentagon, and a fourth plane heading for Washington crashes in a Pennsylvania field. What the hell? President Bush is aboard Air Force One heading to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, home of the Strategic Command, which controls the United States’ nuclear weapons. Armageddon? I file into the conference room with my colleagues. I can hear my heartbeat pounding in my ears. “What the f--- is going on?” yells Harold, my editor, as he tries to wrap his head around what is happening. I begin to shake. We are all veteran reporters in the room, but there is dead silence. Yet it is our job to inform the public, and our reflexes kick in. Harold barks out my assignment: “Connect the dots. Tie this rampage with the first attack on American soil at Pearl Harbor.” I go back to my cubicle and call my husband and speak to my children. Then I block out everything but this story. What happened 60 years ago? I find a former Army Air Corps mechanic, a Purple Heart recipient who was stationed at Hickam Field near Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese bombed the airfield. He had been on duty all night and was going to bed at the time of the early morning raid. He tells me that he ran to get a rifle in the hangar, and it was hit three times. He says that 200 men died there, and the planes, barracks and hangar were heavily damaged. He says that 2,000 servicemen lost their lives in the harbor. Yet he points out that Pearl Harbor was a military target and an act of war, but the World Trade Center victims are civilians. I speak to a widow, whose husband was an aviation machinist mate first class aboard the Helena. She says that he was just getting out of bed, putting on his shoes and planning to go to church when a bomb hit amidships. She tells me that he ran up to the deck, and bullets from a Japanese plane flew over his head and killed two men. She says that what her husband most remembered about that day was the confusion and disbelief at the surprise attack. I write the story on deadline. I climb the three flights of stairs in the parking garage on wobbly knees. Today is the day that changes everything. God help us!

Escape

Stuck between a rock and a hard place?  

Turn your back on these troubling times and escape.

"It is solved by walking," wrote 5th-century saint, Augustine of Hippo.

Come with me.

Let's walk along the seashore together.

Breathe in the salt air. Embrace the stillness. 

Plod on... even though we may stumble.

When the wind shifts the sea grasses, choose a new path.  

Amid the seaweed, await the crashing waves.

Look around and see how everything fits together seamlessly.

Observe the Creator's art. There is nothing better than this.