Wolves At The Door

The ocean in November is white capped and choppy, churning with the winter wind and dark colored with threat. The boats rise and fall on waves, lifted and dropped as if weightless under the overcast skies. The coastline is shadowy and sadly deserted, grimly missing the sunshine and warm days of summer. Winter is a constant storm, cold and gray with something close to menace in the air. Snow is on the way - not the glossy picture postcard kind, but heavy and crippling and endless. The glory days of green grass and afternoon picnics seem impossibly far away. Summer homes are shuttered and closed up, lightless and vacant with only a parttime caretaker to look in on them now and again. It's a long, lonely season for a small ocean side fishing village and wolves are at the door.

I stood in the front yard of this now desolate place, hearing only the wind and the waves. The family home had been sold for back taxes and I was trespassing on a stranger's property. I had come to say a final goodbye, come in a month I hoped would be just as it was, with no summer voices to call my name, no bread baking in Nana's beloved kitchen, no music playing. The house itself was cold and lifeless, shades drawn, locked and empty. The windows were grimy and the grass grew high and wild around the doors. The playhouse door was scarred and hung off it's hinges and the swing set lay on it's side, overgrown with weeds. Even the flagpole seemed defeated, patchy and in need of paint and a new halyard. The ferry was making it's slow way across the passage, fighting the currents and stubbornly clinging to it's course, a single pickup truck it's only passenger. The ocean churned and sent sprays of salt water over the scow, battling back with a persistent fury but the ferry continued it's steady progress. It docked and the pick up truck rattled off, passing me. The driver, a face I didn't recognize, gave me a small, cheerless wave as he drove by because in small villages like this one, everyone is acknowledged whether you know them or not. I nodded back and he drove off, turning onto the Old Road and disappearing in a minor dust storm.

I drove the length and breadth of the island that day, paying my respects to the past and the places that were still there and lingering at the ones that were not. The tides came and went with a reassuring certainty, the only constant thing here was the ocean. People come and go, houses change hands, and life finds a way - through the cold and bitter times, the heartache and loss, the warmth and happiness and the forgotten things, the wounds and the recoveries, life finds a way.