So it begins...(cont. 2)

     Delphine smelled coffee and stirred under the covers. She'd fallen back asleep, watching the moon rise over the river, and now the sun was high over the fir trees; she hadn't slept this late in six months. Time to rise and shine.

     She put on yesterdays clothes and savored the wood smoke trapped in them. Downstairs dishes were being washed and music was playing, Patsy Cline's I Fall To Pieces. How appropriate, she thought. The screen door slammed and the dog came bounding up the stairs to find her. Violet, her sister, must have taken Darwin for a walk. Darwin was a Beagle mix and she knew right away if she shared a sense of humor with some one, because they'd get the joke when told his name. She often felt like she was born in the wrong century. Being born in the Romantic era of nature centered quests would have suited her better than the life of the mind where she lived spinning in one place most of the time.

     "Mornin', Sleepyhead," Violet said as she poured herself and her sister a coffee.

     "Mornin', yourself," Delphine yawned, "How far did you walk him?"

     "Only once around the loop road," she replied while adding milk to both our mugs, then added, "he started sniffing around hollowed out logs and storm drains. Didn't want Dar to come home with face full of quills or needing a tomato bath!"

     "Thanks, Sisafus."

     "You're welcome."

     An awkward silence then fell between them. Delphine knew Violet was wanting to ask something, something that she probably couldn't easily answer, and yet no one else would ask. They hadn't been alone together all weekend. The moment passed and Violet said she was going to town to buy provisions for the rest of the week.

     "Need anything special?" Violet asked simply enough.

     As Delphine looked up, she added, "Beside your usual list of chocolate, coffee, nuts and bread, I mean."

     "Nope, that'll cover it, thanks," nodded Delphine.

     Everyone else was doing other weekly runs; the dump, hardware store, gas station, farmer's and flea markets. Delphine had the whole house to herself. Looking at the tide chart, she realized the dock was hers alone, too. Water would be good for kayaking or swimming for the next two hours, enough time to go exploring with Darwin.

     The dog started to go berserk when she took off her clothes and put on a swimsuit and Chaco sandals. Darwin spun in circles, getting between her legs, trying to make her head to the door before she could collect the requisite sunscreen, shades and bottle of water.  Once on the path, she realized that she hadn't walked down it alone in decades. Perhaps not since she was little, sneaking off at sunrise to find the best shell or treasure that had washed up during the night.

     Delphine found herself softly singing...I fall to pieces...Each time someone speaks your name...I fall to pieces...Time only adds to the flame... until the last line stung. She stopped on the path and realized that she was standing by the tree. Their tree. The tree where they'd cut their initials the first summer they'd met in college. Darwin continued down the path, as Delphine circled the American Beech. It was fifteen years earlier that they had taken her Swiss Army Knife and cut each other's initials into a compass pattern on the tree. Instead of N(orth), E(ast), S(outh), and W(est), they'd carved, D(elphine), P(elletier), S(cott), and W(hite). It was their private totem; her first rose from him and him confiding she was his true North. The tree bark had scarred over the compass; it was bent up into triangular folds over the rose. Yet at each point the initials we still clearly discernible: D, P, S, W. For a moment Delphine felt like the Polaris of photographers tricks; holding stead in the center while all else spins around it.

     She abandoned the idea of a swim in favor of a circumnavigating the island in a kayak. Delphine urged Darwin into the boat, which was always are trick,  as he still held a grudge against the kayak for tipping him into the waves unexpectedly as a pup. Darwin sat between her legs, in front of the paddle as they headed out of the cove and into the river. Normally the green-black water would be too much for her to resist. She regularly swam a mile or more and was known for her love of open water. Yet the sight of the compass rose propelled her to revisit the trail she and Scott had first taken around the island fifteen years earlier. There was something along that route calling to her, like a clue to help her navigate her grief and anger. 



   



   

So it begins...

     The sand rolled out from under her toes, as the wave receded to the sea. The grains were the size of Israeli couscous and amber colored. Nature's foot massage and it's restorative powers were bringing her back to a centered place. That place where a deep belly breath can clear your head, while sending electric goosebumps to your appendages and resetting yourself.

     She didn't want to turn around. She let her feet sink into the ground. With each consecutive wave, her heels were dug in just a centimeter more, as the beach had a steep rake to it. All the people were gathered just beyond her peripheral vision, yet she could hear them laughing, talking and throwing logs on the fire. They had arrived for their annual lobster bake and this year almost all were in attendance. The hood of an old Chevy was the center piece of the cooking station. It would be covered in seaweed, foil wrapped corn and potatoes, steamers, occasionally mussels, and last, but not least, the lobsters. This would be encased under a damp canvas tarp and left to steam to perfection.

     It was low tide and the youngest children were splashing in the tide pools behind her near the high water mark. The adults were wrapping the veggies, collecting seaweed, unloading the trucks, sedans and bikes, then schlepping the various foods and serving items to a low make shift drift wood table by the fire. Teenagers were setting up a volleyball net and throwing frisbees. Dogs were chasing crabs, swimming and trying to steal a clam or two.

     A finger tapped her on the shoulder. It was a warm and calloused finger. She knew by the height of the "hello" who had come to fetch her.

     "Devin, who sent you?" she asked, knowing full well it  was Janette.

     "Jan, she's worried it's too soon for you to be here," he replied, "and I'm afraid she's right by the look of it."

     Turning around she said, "I wouldn't be here if I wasn't sure." Yet her voice had a catch in it that he'd never heard before, or least only once before, at the funeral.

     She looked up, her eyes smarting, as she hid her true feels to the best of her ability. "Go on ahead, I'll join you all in a second or two," she sighed, and with that Devin walked back up the beach to the fire.

     Maybe it is too soon. Familiar doesn't feel natural any more. More thoughts like these percolated around her brain as she found herself not returning up the beach, but rather choosing to wade into the waves. She finally stopped when the water was knee deep and she knew she'd regret having wet clothes after the sunset if she didn't stop there.

     The riotous splashing and exclaiming about how cold the water was could only mean one person. Again, she didn't have to turn.

     "Ronny, you've lived here half your life and you still find the summer water cold?",

     "Yup, Delphine, and you will be too if you don't come up by the fire right now," he laughed and added, "or if you want to stay cold, we have some of that Elephant beer you like to drink!"

     Delphine caved, turned around and they skipped out of the water, hand in hand, all the way back to the bonfire.

                                                                           ***

     The moon woke her up. It was shining through her childhood window, streaming into her eyes. She kept them closed to listen to the now high tide wash over the rocks below the house. Delphine was uncomfortably full. She'd eaten the deviled eggs with curry, the steamers, mussels, corn, potatoes, a whole lobster plus another tail, and had not one, but two slices of blueberry pie. Thank goodness she resisted the s'mores, or it would have been her stomach waking her, not the moon.

     Surf collided with snoring as her ears refined their range. She knew her father's and sister's snores. She was surprise to hear the dog, curled behind her knees snoring, but guessed she wasn't often that tired at home; run ragged by a day a the beach.

     Ragged. An island name. An island roughly two miles off the Coast of Harpswell, ME. An island where a dear poet lived, bought by her doting Dutch husband and the inspiration for the following poem. An island about six miles as the crow flies from the island where she's resting now.

Ragged Island, by Edna St. Vincent Millay

There, there where those black spruces crowd
To the edge of the precipitous cliff,
Above your boat, under the eastern wall of the island;
And no wave breaks; as if
All had been done, and long ago, that needed
Doing; and the cold tide, unimpeded
By shoal or shelving ledge, moves up and down,
Instead of in and out;
And there is no driftwood there, because there is no beach;
Clean cliff going down as deep as clear water can reach;

No driftwood, such as abounds on the roaring shingle,
To be hefted home, for fires in the kitchen stove;
Barrels, banged ashore about the boiling outer harbour;
Lobster-buoys, on the eel-grass of the sheltered cove:

There, thought unbraids itself, and the mind becomes single.
There you row with tranquil oars, and the ocean
Shows no scar from the cutting of your placid keel;
Care becomes senseless there; pride and promotion
Remote; you only look; you scarcely feel.

Even adventure, with its vital uses,
Is aimless ardour now; and thrift is waste.

Oh, to be there, under the silent spruces,
Where the wide, quiet evening darkens without haste
Over a sea with death acquainted, yet forever chaste.

     An island near this island, where Delphine has been coming for decades. An island on which she went from being a girl to a woman. Gone from chaste to knowing, from innocence to acquainted with loss and now desperately trying to braid herself back together. Tonight all saw her scars, they were too fresh to hide; not even seven months, let alone the seven years it takes to grow a new skin.

     Another season is coming to an end, the second of four without him. How long does it take to grow a new heart? It won't be made of the same material; her DNA had altered, immutable, she was now a new person. One she didn't yet know, but was obvious for all to see. She longed to be of one mind and spirit, and Nature, particularly the seacoast, usually delivered her that tranquility. But not this time...she was admitting to being adrift and needed to own it to move  forward.

   

Inheritance

     I listened as he spoke. The images he painted in words brought my mother to  mind, yet he was speaking of me. "I know you want to do grand things," he said carefully, "but you don't have to do them all in one heroic effort or not do them." He was succinctly describing a habit that I'd inherited from my mother. Only, like Nora Ephron advised the Wellesley graduates of 1996, I liked to believe myself to be own Heroine, and some how I'd managed to do so most of my adult life. Yet I knew he was right. I needed to break down my grand goals into small manageable boxes and as Nike so adeptly sells, "Just do it." Our family has been trying to get my Mother to Just Do things for years; first finish her degree and, second, downsize her home(s).

     My grand goals;  first, to edit out all of the wasband's and children's accumulated stuff so that I can sell my house and decant to a smaller home or cohabitate with another adult with children, and second, to write a memoir (although lately I've been flirting with fiction first, to tune my chops, and then produce a creative nonfiction memoir later).

      My mother has lived in the same house, with two different husbands, and 45 years of accumulated stuff. The only formal purging was after my stepfather left 29 years ago. I'm now at year 14 in my house and about to enter the fifth year since I kicked the wasband out. My mother and second stepfather have shared her/their house for nearly 25 years at present.

      I found my friends words to be a reckoning. I was following too closely in my mother's footsteps and knew action needed to be taken. Most of my adult life I was childless and moved often enough to edit my few material possessions. I'd reached a tipping point and needed to address it at home. In the life of the mind, I've fitfully (as my faithful readers here know) written snippets that I've hoped to string together into a book length work. Much like my mother's inability to move, due to conditions never being just right due to over-seeing 12 children between them, nor finishing her degree, although she's surely taken enough credits in college and through Harvard Extension to do so. They always put everyone first at the expense of themselves. So thoughtful and reflective that they spin in circles.

     My father on the other hand is an action-solution guy. We have a running joke that every 7-10 years my father and stepmother will move; and that is exactly what happens. It's always to the best  or  most perfect location, size and layout for their needs. In their 70's they've started to downsize. The huge house with lots of land became a townhouse in the city. Now the town house has turned to an efficient one bedroom apartment on the 4th floor. The second home went from being an Acorn house with three bedrooms on the sea; to a self designed one bedroom w/bunkhouse in a seaside town. They are spending half their time on the single floor house in the coastal town by my brother, and the other half in the city walk-up near my sister, as it suits them now. They decide as a equal unit what they want to do next, plan it and execute it. Then they tell the four adult children, sometimes in process and other times after the fact.

     I'm a goal setter and reflective person like my father. I've been good at doing that most of my life, when I was the only one I was responsible for in a given decision. But since being a married person and then a single mother of two, my decisiveness on the home front was weakened. Other than keeping the house for my kids to finish school and for me to keep the capitol intact for my self down the line. Yet I find the accumulation of stuff and the lack of an immediate plan for my next step to have been weighing me down psychologically. And it's taken away the energy required to face the fear of putting my thoughts into words every day, in any meaningful way. (Plus I was wanting to have my private thoughts be private for the first year of my relationship with my man friend. This has been a real exercise in holding on to a renewed confidence, not being impulsive, nor quick to judge (cut bait or go whole hog). So I've been in a reflective spin-cycle like my Mother for a few years now.

     But as we rode into Boston, on the way to what would become a wonderful evening of company and a concert, I found that his words could just as easily have been about my mother as myself. And when I said as much, he said, "I don't know her, I know you and I want to help." It's nice to become known. It's nice to trust asking for help, receiving it and realizing what a gift that can be if you can listen. I wish my Mom would listen and act; but I'm only her daughter, so now I will listen, reflect and act to break the chain for my son and daughter.