Thanksgiving musings

Wild turkeys frolic across the street in my neighbor's yard.

The wind is howling outside my window, a most unwelcome sound.

A few weeks ago a 50-mile-an-hour gust took down a 100-foot pine in our front yard, landing on the electric wires and crushing our mailbox across the street.

It is the day before Thanksgiving, and a nor’easter is barreling up the coast, bringing high winds and torrential rains. This year, those going over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house may prefer the on-the-river route.

Since I am hosting Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow, I am blessed to have the day off from work, offering ample time to prepare the feast.

Today I will make a batch of winter soup, a concoction of chicken stock, carrots, onions, potatoes and turnips, thickened with a roux of flour and butter, and sprinkled with a handful of parsley. The flavors will meld nicely overnight.

The rolling pin will come out of hiding, and I’ll make enough dough for two pies, pumpkin and blueberry. Once they’re in the oven, their fragrance will fill the house, the intoxicating scent of cinnamon and spice.

Meanwhile, I’ll melt chocolate and whip it with egg yolks, strong-brewed coffee, powdered sugar and heavy cream for chocolate mousse, a decadent dessert garnished with a spoonful of freshly-whipped cream that just melts in your mouth.

Then I’ll make my mother’s favorite dessert, Grape-Nuts custard, baked in a hot water bath for nearly an hour.

I usually use a friend’s fresh eggs which create a frothy mixture that rises sky-high. But sadly, a fox recently killed his hens while they were pecking in his front yard. I’ll have to make do with the grocery store variety.

Lastly, I’ll set the table with a hand-embroidered tablecloth, a beautiful gift from my husband’s Canadian aunts; and I’ll take out our best china from the hutch.

The turkey and the rest of the preparations can wait until the wee hours of tomorrow morning.

I’ll leave you with some words about the holiday from my favorite New England author, Gladys Taber.

“In a world of turmoil, where poverty and prejudice still exist … I am thankful for so very much,” she said. “No voice is raised in hatred in my household. Footsteps sound gently on the threshold… The grandchildren walk and play without fear. The dogs settle on the wide hearth and doze into a warm, comfortable sleep. The steady glow of friendship warms me daily. … These are simple things, but to me they are most precious. And as I recall each one, November’s beaver moon shines brighter than ever; and I know that love and friendship, hearth fires and faith are indeed gifts to be thankful for and to treasure always.”

                                                                                                        

The sting

As tranquil as a pond in midsummer, the Sakonnet barely ripples on this overcast, gray November morning.

I watch a fishing boat navigate the channel heading downriver to open sea, and my mind drifts back to a long ago fishing expedition.

My husband and our two boys had gone fishing at daybreak. On an impulse later that morning, my daughter and I waited for them at the ramp and climbed aboard.

It was the first time I had taken a ride on our new acquisition, an 18-foot Sea Pro center-console boat with a 90-horsepower Toshatsu engine. It was a clear day with little wind, and we skimmed over the waves heading a few miles upriver. After circling Gould Island, we returned to the state beach.

Backing our Ford Explorer up to the trailer hitch, my husband dragged our boat onto dry land and began to secure the straps over the transom.

Another four-wheel vehicle, a late-model Ford Bronco, pulled up alongside our boat. The words “State of Rhode Island Environmental Police” were on the door.

Dressed in a dark green uniform with a prominent badge and holstered gun, the officer strode over to my husband and asked for the boat registration.

“Are we going to jail?” my son whispered. “No,” I said, hugging him close.

My husband continued to pack away the fishing gear, pretending it was just another day at the beach.

“How many fish did you catch today?” the officer asked.

“About a dozen,” my husband said.

“Show me the fish,” he ordered.

My husband climbed on the trailer, swung his leg over the gunwale and flung himself into the boat. Grabbing the pail, he handed it to the officer, who carried the fish to his truck. Then he took out a measuring device and calculated the length of every single bloody fish.

“These two are under limit,” he said. “Put them back in the water.”

Humiliated, my husband carried the fish to the water’s edge and tossed them in.

“You folks from around here?” the officer asked, changing his tone of voice and letting down his guard. Our Massachusetts license plate gleamed in the noontime sun.

“We’re summer residents,” my husband said.

We headed for the summer house in silence, but some seagulls spotted the floating fish, and they squawked loudly as they fought over our catch.

I knew that if those two fish were under limit, they were slightly under limit. What difference did it make whether those fish were consumed by humans or birds?

These days when we pull up anchor and begin to approach the ramp, we scan the beach and waste little time in hitching up the boat and driving away.

The seagulls can fend for themselves.

 

 

 

 

The end of the season

Colorful leaves create a natural fence at the summer house.

It is the middle of November, and we are forced to face the inevitable. The delightful interlude of sunny summer days and simple pleasures is coming to an end. It is time to close up the summer house for another season.

Our sweatshirts are no longer ample protection from the cold winds, and we linger a few minutes at the beach before returning to the warmth of the house.

This week my husband and his friend will winterize the place, draining the water from the pipes to prevent freezing.

The little house will be shuttered, bracing itself for icy winds and a long season of silence. Bereft of family and unable to generate heat or light, it will hibernate and patiently await our return.

With each passing year, I find it more difficult to leave the summer house behind.

Sarah Orne Jewett best describes the feelings of separation from a seaside home in “The Country of the Pointed Firs.”

“The sunshine of a northern summer was coming to its lovely end. The days were few then … and I let each of them slip away unwillingly as a miser spends his coins. At last I had to say goodbye to all my … friends, and my homelike place in the little house, and return to the world in which I feared to find myself a foreigner… When I went in again, the little house had suddenly grown lonely, and my room looked empty as it had the day I came. 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.”

With gratefulness I bid farewell to another season. Every weekend throughout the long winter ahead, my husband and I will be drive-by visitors, checking on the summer house.

Then we’ll park our truck at the beach, shut off the engine, and admire the Creator's handiwork. 

“The immensity of nature … gives us a new perspective on life, washes away or minimizes our worries,” writes Ferenc Mate, the author of “A Real Life – Rediscovering the Roots of Our Happiness.” “How can we feel sad with all the beauty there is to see? And how can we feel poor when all this beauty belongs to us?”

My stormy life in journalism



Twilight near Old Stone Bridge, Tiverton, R.I.

The truck tires dig in the sand and come to a stop near the curiosity that is Old Stone Bridge.

Once a mighty fortress, all that remains are two stone sections still attached to land, one on the Tiverton side, the other on the opposite shore in Portsmouth.

During the onslaught of the 1938 Hurricane, one of the worst to ever breach these shores, hurricane-force winds and waves damaged the bridge. Repaired, it was a mainstay until Hurricane Carol in 1954 inflicted the fatal blow.

It is twilight, and I am tired. I have come to the water to RUMInate.

During the past year, I have held down two jobs, working about 50 hours a week.  

According to Rumi, the thirteenth-century founder of Sufi mysticism and one of the most widely read poets in the U.S., I have been “Tending Two Shops.”

“You own two shops, / and you run back and forth. / Try to close the one that’s a fearful trap, / getting always smaller. Checkmate, / this way. Checkmate, that. / Keep open the shop where you’re not selling fish-hooks anymore. / You are the free-swimming fish.”

Throughout my 30-year journalism career, I have worked for 15 newspapers and magazines.

I began as a freelance piloting my own row boat in calm seas. Then I boarded bigger vessels, jumping ship and climbing the ladder.

Sometimes I lost a foothold as I yearned to soar from the crow’s nest.

But a new digital era was dawning, and from my perch I watched the winds of change batter my profession.

Three times I went down with the ship, when two of the magazines folded and one of the newspapers went bankrupt.

Through the years I clung to the rocks, while advertising dollars and circulation plummeted and services outsourced.

I prayed to the Lord to quiet the raging seas, but the powers that be were unrepentant.

And the skeleton crew kept rowing upriver against the tide...

Hanging on for dear life, I went from full-time plus overtime to a handful of hours with no benefits, while I took another job as a business manager in the safe harbor of health care to pay the bills.

A few days ago I walked the plank in the company of some of my shipmates, including my captain who had welcomed me aboard more than a decade ago.

Panting, I floated in with the tide, landing on this beach in the shadow of Old Stone Bridge.

Rescued, I realize I am now a free-swimming fish no longer hooked to a dying industry.

Tomorrow I will tend one shop.

Long ago reflections in the catacombs

 

Houghton Memorial Chapel at Wellesley College

Searching for the opening to the underground level of the century-old, granite-blocked, red-roofed Houghton Memorial Chapel, I noticed some stone steps leading downward, and I swung open the heavy wooden door.

When it closed behind me, the sound echoed, vibrating throughout the empty rooms.

An autumn midday,

I sought refuge within stone.

I found emptiness.

I walked down into the catacombs, and I would soon discover why this place was aptly named.

Catacombs were secret places for worship and burial in the early Christian communities of the Roman Empire.

Dark and cold, the white-walled passageway was eerily quiet.

Upstairs, the beautiful Protestant Chapel glowed with the polished veneer of intricately designed woods while light streamed through lovely stained-glass windows.

Here in the lower level were discarded wooden pews, old choir robes, stacked chairs and boxes filled with religious goods.

I passed the Buddhist and Hindu meditation room and the Muslim prayer room before I saw the Catholic sanctuary. When I walked into the room, I felt disoriented, since I expected an altar and statues of saints.

I saw a small man dressed in street clothes, sitting on a couch. Immediately, he stood up and introduced himself in a thick Spanish accent as Father Andres.

I sat down. The little priest dragged a small table into the center of the room and draped it with a white cloth. He lit a votive candle and placed ribbons in a prayer book, marking passages.

No trappings of church

Filled the underground chapel.

No saints but sinners.

Another man entered the room. He was very tall. Speaking with an Eastern European accent, he introduced himself to the priest as Igor.

We waited for others to arrive. No one came.

The holy man laid three Communion hosts on a silver plate and poured red wine into a clear beverage glass, instead of the usual golden or silver chalice. Only now I noticed an unframed print of Mary, a medieval portrait of the Queen of Heaven, propped up against the wall. The priest placed a long silken vestment cloth around his neck and began to pray.

The Mass began. I listened to the familiar words spoken with a foreign tongue, and they sounded strange and alien to me. The priest passed the book to Igor, and he read in his deep, heavily accented voice a passage from the Old Testament. Then he handed me the book, and I read the psalm, line by line. They repeated my words, and our voices became one, praising the Lord.

After the Scripture readings, Father Andres asked us to pray for the young women on campus. We closed our eyes and silently prayed.

Instead of kneeling in pews, we sat in orange plastic chairs while the priest broke the bread and blessed the wine. He placed the Communion host in my hand and passed me the glass. I put the bread in my mouth and sipped the warm wine, the body and blood of Christ.

The priest bade us go in peace.

I climbed out of the catacombs into the bright fall sunshine, welcoming the warmth and light around me. I thought about the half-hour service and the unlikely gathering: the little priest, a Cambridge psychologist from northern Spain; the Boston University history professor, an immigrant from the Czech Republic; and myself, an American-born student in pursuit of an undergraduate degree.

And like the early Christians, I had traveled to what seemed to me, a secretive underground place. Once there, I had worshipped with strangers whose accented voices proclaimed an identical faith. Our prayers had echoed through dark and empty passages and filled them with a beautiful sound.

All were invited.

Only a few came to pray.

All benefited.

 

Different strokes for different folks

 

There is a new species inhabiting our bay. They float and paddle like a duck, and sometimes they dip underwater.

The paddleboarders are here.

Driving down Fogland Road and onto the boat ramp, I expect to see some fishermen in powerboats trawling nearby; but on this windless, clear and bright sunny day, I spot a bevy of boarders standing up and paddle surfing in the Sakonnet.

Traditional paddleboarding is a surface water sport in which participants are propelled by a swimming motion using their arms while lying or kneeling on a paddleboard or surfboard in the ocean.

A spinoff of this sport is standup paddle surfing, which is usually performed in the open ocean with the participant paddling and surfing unbroken swells to cross between islands or journey from one coastal area to another.

Surfing the net, I find that standup paddleboarders can stroke for hours, and a twenty-mile race is only a warm-up for a well-trained waterman.

I had always associated paddleboarding with the South Pacific, but I conduct a quick search on Google and find a long list of businesses catering to this sport in our local waters.

In fact, I discover that Paddle Board Rhode Island is the 2013 Editors’ Choice winner in Yankee Magazine’s Travel Guide to New England, which is awarded by Yankee’s editors and contributors, who name select restaurants, lodgings and attractions in New England to the exclusive list.
 
“While it may be hard to create a business, the true challenge is in making it work, being good enough that it endures and brings people back. Those are the qualities we look for and reward when we say ‘Best of New England,’” wrote Yankee's editor Mel Allen.

Recognized as the “Best Way to See the Bay,” Paddle Boarding Rhode Island offers paddleboard tours, lessons, fitness classes and parties, including full moon paddles, dog standup paddleboarding tours, sunrise fitness sessions and paddling through downtown Providence.

According to their website, they describe standup paddling as a very different, healthy, spiritual and refreshing way to connect with the ocean and nature, and they paddle anywhere.​

“We have paddled as far and wide as Hawaii and Costa Rica, California, New Hampshire, Cape Cod and Florida. But this is the Ocean State. Experience Rhode Island's coast as you've never experienced it before.”

Sunday best

 

Driving along country roads on a fall October day, I feel blessed to be a New Englander.

“The Summer comes and the Summer goes; / Wild-flowers are fringing the dusty lanes, / The swallows go darting through the fragrant rains, / Then, all of a sudden – it snows,” wrote nineteenth-century New Hampshire poet and travel writer Thomas Bailey Aldrich.

The leaves are beginning to turn, and my mind wanders back to childhood days when Sunday afternoons, especially those in autumn, were spent along back roads of neighboring towns.

Back then we abided by the Blue Laws, and business ceased. Consequently, Sunday was not just another day of the workweek.

At our house we followed a ritual that began early in the morning when we dressed in our Sunday best and went to church.

After service, my father would drive to the neighborhood store and buy a dozen sugar-dusted jelly doughnuts.

At home my mother set out the old brown teapot. With sticky fingers we held onto our teacup in one hand and the pastry in the other.

Right after breakfast, my mother and I put on one of my grandmother’s hand-sewn aprons and prepared a full-course Sunday dinner, consisting of soup, salad, entrée, vegetables, biscuits and dessert.

Then, as soon as the dishes were washed, we went on a Sunday ride. Each week we headed in a different direction to destination unknown.

In the fall, we stopped at farm stands and harvest festivals, filling the trunk with pumpkins, chrysanthemums and jugs of apple cider.

The last stop was always at some out-of-the-way place for a double-scoop of ice cream.

Sunday evenings were quiet times, spent finishing up homework assignments and playing board games before we climbed into bed.

Today Sundays have evolved into just another workday, and many folks can no longer look forward to a day of rest. Family members are always missing when we gather around the table at home or at the summer house because they have to work.

We still begin the Lord’s Day in church and prepare an extra special Sunday dinner. But we rarely ride around the countryside.

Mostly, we relax, while reading or watching Red Sox or Patriots games.

But whenever I feel overworked and overwrought by the fast-paced lifestyle we live these days, I think back with nostalgia to quieter, simpler times when Sundays were best.