So why am I not writing about Ukraine, the threat of nuclear attack, Hershel Walker and his lies, the January 6th commission hearing, my fears around the midterms, the devastation of Ian, how the first frost was such a surprise that I hadn’t covered my dahlias?
Because, though I am no Pollyanna, to which you all can attest, I want to focus on something less intense, to calm myself as another winter approaches and the world seems to be drowning in outrage and lunacy.
In the immediate aftermath of my son’s death when I was mired in grief, a friend who’d also lost a child counseled me to feel free to allow myself some distraction from all that sorrow, that it was absolutely necessary for survival.
She was unquestionably right, though it was hard to see her logic through my tears.
So, in the midst of this politically fraught universe, I’m going to write about summer, a time when I feel gloriously unbound, ridiculously happy, more of the self I long to be. One of my writing teachers once said that the best time to write about a season is when you’re not in the throes of it—the felt contrast makes the featured one all the more explicit.
See me at the beach with my father when I was just a year old, already loving the water and sun, as he did. My mother laid me outside in my carriage every day, a minute on each side, she told me, as the pediatrician had mandated.
I got an early start on summer love, a tan June baby, the sun shining my skin, blonding my hair, wearing as few clothes as possible. And here I am, eighty years later, still enraptured with warmth and minimal dress, though my hair is now gray, and skin speckled with spots from all that sun-minus-sunscreen.
Living in Connecticut, as I have all my life, has gifted me with ample opportunities to spend time at the beach. Many of my high school friends had summer places on the shoreline which we visited often. I spent the days before my wedding at the beach—for a tan instead of the makeup I never wore. My mother often rented a place on the water when my children were young, and those seaside houses somehow lightened the difficulties that beset my family of origin’s troubled relationships. The beach was the place my husband and I went on our honeymoon, where we would head for our rare getaways, always refreshed by the sand and the sea.
And then there was Block Island. Two years after Geoff died, not knowing what else to give my husband for his late May birthday, I thought, a weekend there might just be the right gift. We’d gone there too when the kids were young, to a simple cottage in Minister’s Lots, close to Crescent Beach. We walked down the beach to see our old rental, then back towards town for a seafood lunch. I gathered stones, we smiled for the first time in months. When it began to rain, we laughingly pulled garbage bags over our clothes and cycled out to Rodman’s Hollow to see the old barn we’d glimpsed advertised in a realtor’s window.
We wanted to hang on to that happiness.
We’d always dreamed of buying an old barn and fixing it up. Here it was, in the most gorgeous, austere setting imaginable. And did it need fixing. How could we do this? Crazy with youth, hope and the need for release from our grief, we took out a huge mortgage and enlisted all our friends, Geoff’s, and Matthew’s friends, to help.
And come and help they did. We strapped on toolbelts, stripped off the roof and siding shingles, snapped blue chalk lines, hammered on new ones redolent of cedar, a blaring boombox perched on the roof’s peak. We sandblasted white paint off the venerable stone foundation, hacked through bunches of ancient wires, sawed pine for trim and sills, stained the cement floor downstairs bronze, ordered appliances that might or might not make it over on the ferry.
With plywood sides on the pickup truck, I could load it with debris from “the pile” each day, drive it to the dump, come back for more.
And always, the sea. We could see it from all the big windows we installed to take full advantage of the spectacular views. Most days I managed a walk through the hollow down to Black Rocks beach, sat and listened to the waves crash, wondered when this sorrow would ever leave me, if it ever would. But the company and support of all those friends carried us through those crazy, shining years and continues to, even though we sold the barn a long time ago.
We hadn’t realized we were rebuilding our lives.
Summer heals. I love the need for fewer clothes, the ease of pulling on a pair of shorts, a tank top, flip flops, in readiness for the day ahead. I love the long days replete with light, the invitation to be outside all the time. My husband’s garden bursts with tomatoes, lettuce, eggplant, broccoli; mine with roses, angelonia, cleome, Russian sage, and peonies. All the windows are open, breezes blow winter from the rooms of our home.
How not to walk outside and feel joy in being alive, especially now as the realization that my years are numbered is always with me. I recently heard a “dharma talk” (Buddhist for sermon, or lecture) about the necessity of keeping joy in our lives, how it offers us the cushions of safety and kindness. If we keep our minds inclined towards joy and happiness, the dharma teachers said, we could loosen our grip on perfectionist tendencies. Our minds will feel settled and free from torment.
Just what I needed to hear and continue to need to hear. Yes, being witness to the horrors of the world is of primary importance, but I know perhaps more deeply now than ever, being of “a certain age,” that I require the ballast of joy that summer brings me, enough of it to sustain me through the long New England winters, the uncertainty of whatever lies ahead.
Still, I don’t want summer to end. Though it must and it will, as all things do.
But I haven’t put my shorts away yet.
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If you haven’t already, please listen to my interview with the wonderful Martha Anne Toll, author of Three Muses, in bookstores now. https://youtu.be/FJ5ddMZSeKw
I can’t remember if I posted this lovely review of my memoir by Story Circle Organization : https://www.storycircle.org/book_review/i-am-not-a-juvenile-delinquent-how-poetry-changed-a-group-of-at-risk-young-women/
Get this incredibly important book, No Choice, by another dear friend, Becca Andrews, about the destruction of Roe and what it means for our times: https://www.amazon.com/No-Choice-Destruction-Fundamental-American/dp/1541768396/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2HJLG6IVLR4M7&keywords=no+choice+andrews&qid=1665963009&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIwLjc3IiwicXNhIjoiMC4wMCIsInFzcCI6IjAuMDAifQ%3D%3D&s=books&sprefix=No+Choice%2Cstripbooks%2C94&sr=1-1
And I promised this man that I would publicize this link, hopefully none of us will ever need it but you never know: If Family or Friend is Arrested - https://www.omaralawgroup.com/what-to-know-if-family-friend-arrested/