Fair to Partly Cloudy

Most summer days in Nova Scotia bordered so close to perfect that you'd have been hard pressed to tell the difference.  The sky was a brilliant blue, lazy clouds drifted by, the air was clear and clean and tinged with salt, the ocean was placid with gentle whitecaps.
We would run through the strawberry field with the dogs at our heels, sit on the white washed side porch and daydream, wander down The Old Road and around to the cove to see who was brave enough to wade into the icy water.  Even as a child, I knew there was no more perfect place in the whole world - but when the fog came in, dense, wet and so thick you couldn't see your hand in front of your face - well, then everything changed and became dismal and forlorn and a little mysterious.  There was a sense of isolation and loneliness to the fog - you felt lost and disoriented, closed in and uncertain if the landscape would be the same when it eventually lifted.  But of course it always was.
Westport was always still just across the passage, Peter's Island was intact, the lighthouse still stood.  There were no hungry Stephen King creatures milling about and waiting to snatch an unsuspecting child, there was just a solid wall of fog that distorted sounds and frizzed even the straightest hair.

Nana, of course, was a veteran of the weather and always made sure we were well stocked with books and board games.  She kept several decks of cards on hand and when all else failed and we became whiny and restless, she could always be counted upon to invent a chore that needed doing.  It was no small task to keep three active children and their mother entertained and out from underfoot - often for several days at a time - but she was resigned and did her best not to become cross with us.  She taught us dominoes and card tricks, let us play our 45's on the sunporch until her head ached, baked cookies and refereed the inevitable arguments and spats.  She showed me calligraphy and let me use her best stationery and quill ink pen to practice.  Confined and ill tempered, my mother drank earlier and would often shut herself in her room, wanting no part of these somewhat desperate efforts to kill time.  Aunt Vi and Aunt Pearl arrived to gossip and play canasta and the knitting ladies came once a week, but mostly people stayed home and waited for the sun.

The highlight of such days was the afternoon mail run - feeling closed off and suffocated and bored, we would all pile into the old Lincoln and drive ever so slowly to the post office. There might be a Boston newspaper or a new Spiegel catalogue, seed packets for the window boxes or even a new crossword puzzle book.  The joy was in never knowing and the possibility of a surprise.

Two things signaled the approach of clearing weather:  radio reception improved albeit marginally and Nana's arthritis pain, always the more reliable prognosticator, eased considerably.

These old bones know, she would say with a relieved smile, It'll be fine tomorrow.

And it was - I would wake to the sounds of chattering seagulls and not the sorrowful foghorn.  Sunshine would be streaming in through the open window and I would hear the cheerful back and forth of the men laying out fish on the drying racks.

Wake up, sleepy head!  my grandmother would call, Daylight's burnin'!


Westport shone in the morning light, the tide was high on Peter's Island and the ocean glistened like crystals.  Since then I've lived in Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Florida and Louisiana.  I've visited San Francisco, Dallas, New York City, New Orleans, Chicago, Atlanta and Memphis, spent two weeks in Hawaii and a week cruising the Caribbean.  And still I've never been anywhere as perfect as a small island in Nova Scotia.
Everywhere else is just fair to partly cloudy.

Almost Enough

We lived on the east side of town, far less affluent than "The Heights" which bordered Lexington and Concord,

but far more upscale than the Cambridge slums which were a stone's throw away from us.  Our's was a quiet neighborhood of mostly one family homes with fenced yards and two cars in each driveway but no tennis courts or backyard swimming pools, no grand homes or tastefully uniformed servants.  We were working class, public school families who mowed our own lawns and took out our own trash each Monday morning. 

The Lynch family - two adults and a rebellious teenage son who favored leather jackets and kept a cigarette tucked behind one ear - lived behind us on Lake Street.  All that stood between us was a cyclone fence.  Johnny was a high school drop out, part of an unpleasant gang of young and menacing thugs who roamed the neighborhood, vandalizing property and terrorizing the residents, off and on being sent off to reform school or later, thrown into jail.  His own parents were terrified of him, the police knew him on sight, and the oldest of my two younger brown others idolized him.  This frightened me and dismayed my parents profoundly - their middle child was clearly on the path to an early juvenile delinquency - but they had no idea how to alter the journey.  My brother, with his perpetual sneer and easy defiance, outmaneuvered their attempts at discipline and ignored their pleas to conform and behave.  By the sixth grade he was already well known to the truant officer as a repeat offender and he came and went pretty much as he pleased.   He was a foul mouthed, abusive bully, a tormentor of small animals, an unrepentant thief and troublemaker and I hated him intensely.

He had gotten the cap pistol from Johnny Lynch, a trade for two packs of stolen cigarettes.  It was silver and shiny, small enough to be easily concealed under his shirt and nothing to be concerned about, just another toy gun to be added to an already impressive collection.  But it was loud and when fired it made sparks and smelled of fireworks, far too much temptation for a cruel natured child without a conscience. When I heard the noise and then the sharp, mournful howl of an animal in pain, followed by a cackle of laughter, I ran to the room my brothers shared and discovered the older one holding my beloved daschund by the collar and firing the cap pistol into his ear.   Without thinking, I balled my hand into a fist and slammed it into my brother's smirking face, not once but twice, with all the energy I had, and then snatched up my trembling and terrified dog.  

After several hours in the ER, my brother returned home with a broken nose, a grudge, and a story of how I had beaten him up for no reason - he might've been believed except that he'd hastily shoved the cap gun beneath his pillow along with the strip of burned caps, and when he approached Fritz, the dog cowered immediately.  Since he'd spent the better part of the evening denying he even had the pistol, it was enough to convict him, circumstantial or not.  I lost a week's allowance for the two punches - sentence suspended since I'd acted in defense of a helpless animal - my brother was confined to his room for a month and docked his allowance for two. 

I'll get you for this! he snarled at me and to my absolute astonishment, my daddy slapped him across the face, hard enough to make him cry.

If, my daddy said in a calm but deadly tone of voice I'd never heard before, you ever raise a hand to your sister, your brother, or one of the dogs again, you'll have spent your very last night under this roof.  

Stunned at this display of temper, my brother fell back onto the bed, choking with shock and disbelief.  My daddy, white with rage, stumbled out of the room - I was sure he was already regretting the slap but he never took it back.  Even my mother, a staunch defender of this child who was the most like her, stood speechless.  

As for me, it was almost enough.

Noah Nickerson's Pig

There's a first time for everything.

A young man, in his early teens or so, neatly dressed, smiling and quite polite, approached me in the drugstore and asked for $.69 for a smoothie.  He was, he assured me, really thirsty but had no money.  I was, I admit, a little suspicious and a lot surprised but he appeared harmless so I dug in my pocket and gave him three quarters.   When I thought about it later, I wasn't sure why he'd chosen me - did I have the look of any easy mark or was it just random, I found myself idly wondering - and I was even less sure why I'd complied so easily and quickly.  It'd have been more in character to turn him down and report him for panhandling in a public place.  It was an odd and unlikely encounter, I thought, and I found myself musing about what his parents would've thought of it.

Later that night there was heat lightning that lit up the sky like a far off battle.  I sat on the back deck and watched it while the dogs took their last evening walk and the crickets buzzed.  I was thinking, as I so often do, about summer nights at the edge of the ocean, about being sixteen, about the tides and the stars and the night lightning that split the proud old red pine by the schoolhouse and killed Noah Nickerson's prize pig.

The tree had been in place since as long as anyone could remember.  It sat just at the edge of the road, an old warrior about halfway between the schoolhouse and the telephone office - tall, straight, flourishing, seemingly indestructible.  The lightning was fierce that night, it crackled over the cove, flashing in long, angry streaks and, for a few seconds at a time, turning the village into a stark black and white postcard.  It felt close, as if it might strike at our very feet.  Then there was a particularly deafening crack and sizzle and we all looked toward the schoolhouse and flinched to see the old red pine crash to the ground, cut jaggedly in two and on fire.

Christ! I heard from behind me and then we were all on our feet, racing toward the smoke, the fire, and the felled tree.

It looked like a giant, backwards capital L - its limbs and leaves still rustled but its roots were peeking up from the torn up ground and its trunk was harshly divided - half at an awkward angle but still standing, half sadly horizontal.  Noah Nickerson's pig had been unexpectedly, thoroughly and prematurely turned into porkchops.  Larry and Johnny pulled the poor creature from beneath the splayed out branches just as Noah, shirtless under his overalls and barefoot, emerged from his house waving a shotgun and screaming curses.  The boys ran to intercept and disarm him - we all knew how much stock he put by the pig and were afraid the shock might unhinge him.  It was a sad and delicate moment.  

Miranda! Noah wailed bitterly and fell to his knees beside the sow, his tear stained face pale with grief.  We stood around him in an awkward circle, unsure of what to say or do.  Wake up, Miranda!  he yelled, Don't be dead!

And then, a miracle.  The pig stirred, grunted, struggled to her feet and gave us all a baleful look.  Noah threw himself around her neck and sobbed.

Tough pig, Larry said admiringly, 'Pears her hind leg's broke.

Johnny was already kneeling and running his hands over the pig's hindquarters.  'Pears so, he agreed, but it's clean. Should heal ok.  Miranda gave a disrespectful snort and tried to head butt him but he held her firmly while
Larry took off his belt and found a small but sturdy branch and together they devised a makeshift splint.  It took some doing but once Noah produced a burlap feed sack, they managed to slide it under Miranda and drag her back to the sty.  Rowena was sent for and Noah quieted.  

The pig healed, as pigs will, and was scheduled for slaughter, as pigs are.  But in the end, Ned Nickerson gave in to Noah's pleas and his own private reservations that just maybe if the Good Lord hadn't seen fit to take Miranda, then he shouldn't either.  

There is indeed a first time for everything, even if you're a pig.

Thoughts from the Sun Room

Late afternoon sunlight filters through the partially open blinds in the sun room.  There's a gentle breeze from the ceiling fan and the scent of azaleas drifts in through the open window.  It's uncommonly quiet - with the cats not stirring and the dogs stretched out on all sides of me - a rare time for me, peaceful and comfortable after a long and tiring day.  The whole neighborhood and even the dog next door seem to be sleeping.  For no special reason, I begin to consider how lucky I am and how extraordinarily kind life has been.

Tomorrow is Friday and the weekend beckons.  I have plans for music and taking pictures and sleeping in with the animals - the Farmers Market is in full swing and if I get there early enough, I may avoid the worst heat.
The roof doesn't leak, it's payday, and housebreaking the little daschund is finally going well.  All in all, it would be hard to ask for more...

I wonder that by the time I get to being satisfied with life I've spent more or it than I have left - seems like a poorly thought out plan to me - but it does tend to focus me on each day which seems like a damn fine plan to me.  I think of the past and the future but try and live in the present since as I'm too often reminded, it's all we really have.  This was driven home to me again recently - Though we haven't been close in a dozen or so years, the news of an old friend's just diagnosed cancer strikes close to my heart and leaves me unsettled.  It's the best kind of bad news, my friend Tricia tells me, caught early and not the small cell kind that kills in a matter of months - but still.  There's a sense of unreality about it, as if we're talking about a character in a book and not someone I care for, not a living, breathing, flesh and blood friend.   

I haven't kept up with his life these past years, nor he with mine - absence may make the heart grow fonder but it can also make it forgetful and a little thoughtless.  Feelings, like well running engines, need routine care and maintenance or they rust with neglect and disuse.  The good news is that they can be cleaned, repaired, and restored to good working order - a little oil here, a part there - they may not be good as new and the labor can be intense but they'll get you where you want to go.  Without meaning to, I think we all sometimes allow things to slip away, even things that are precious to us - we get distracted or busy or drift in different directions.  We put off returning a telephone call or sending a quick thank you note, bypass making a last minute invitation, arrive late and leave early.  Soon friends turn into acquaintances and acquaintances into people we used to know and never see anymore.  As a general rule, I don't believe in regrets but every rule has an exception and there are people and places I've let time and distance take from me, as well as those that I've given a not so gentle shove to.  I wish it wasn't so.  No one has so many friends that they can't do with one more, I remind myself.

Life isn't always kiss and make up and there are times when it's hard to know how to put things right.  Or if you need to.  Or if you should.  Now and again, doing nothing is the wisest action.

If Looks Could Kill

If looks could kill, I thought but was wise enough not to say, an ambulance would be arriving at any moment to remove my lifeless body.

The cashier, a defiant and resentful little girl who clearly had not had the benefit of an education or being taught any kind of manners, chewed her gum open mouthed and loudly and glared at me.  One scrawny hand, balled into a tight fist, was on her slung out hip and her dull eyes were stubbornly cold and lifeless.

It ain't there, she repeated when I gave her my customer number for the second time.

Yes, I said, equally cold, it is.  Maybe you didn't hear me over your gum.

This earned me what I had no doubt she considered a withering look, followed by a sneer, but lately I've noticed a decided lack of patience with what passes for "customer service" and it takes more than a nasty look from an illiterate and bad tempered clerk to wither me.  

Would you rather we take this up with the store manager?  I asked and gave her an effortless and completely insincere smile.  As I see it, you can swallow your gum and put the number in correctly or.....not.  Her over painted nasty little mouth opened in surprise and I thought for a moment she was going to bare her lipstick stained teeth at me - instead she viciously punched in numbers on the keyboard and rather than tell me the total, gave the swivel monitor a rude shove so that it faced me.  I casually and deliberately wrote out a check and slipped it toward her.  Not another word was exchanged.

I'm of an age where I don't feel I have to be passive about abuse or rudeness or stupidity any longer - there's altogether too much of it in the world and after 64 years, I feel entitled to stand up to it.  Race may excuse a lack of education - youth may explain laziness and sullenness and an unwillingness to work - cheap labor may too tempting to pass up and good help impossible to find.  But fair warning... I've pretty much used up all my tact, patience, tolerance and sunny nature.  Push me and I'll push back.

Save your sorry excuses for "customer service" for your own kind.

The Right Words

I read of the death of a friend's son with shock and great sadness.  I sent condolences and prayers but couldn't help thinking how, when you need them the most, words are so damnably useless and faith is shallow.  Heaven may indeed be a better place, if you believe, but it doesn't fill the empty space where a child should be.  It doesn't heal your heart or lessen the pain. I can't think how often I've wondered at God's will in taking children, even grown children with families of their own and I find myself thinking about how there are things that happen to us - unimaginable things - that we learn to live with but never truly recover from.  Neither words nor faith can make this better.

My daddy would've found the right words, I think a little bitterly, would've known what to say to bring some small measure of comfort, would've guided the family gently through the grief and anger.  He understood sadness and sorrow better than anyone I've ever known and didn't question why a dreadful thing happened, just helped others through it.  

If I can lift just a little of their burden.... he once told me and I got selfishly and thoughtlessly angry, demanding to know why, beyond his professional duties, he should be the one to carry their pain, as if he would be less sad if someone else stepped in.  He gave me a surprised and slightly wounded look and I felt his disappointment.  It's what I do, he said quietly, To make things a little easier for those who are suffering. It's what we should all do.  I didn't understand then but even so his words shamed me.

Death is senseless and greedy and neither words nor faith can make it better.   Bless those who reach out a hand and try.

The Morgue, The Medical Examiner, The Mystery

There was no shortage of doctors to choose from after I outgrew my pediatrician, but my parents selected the Cambridge coroner - he was a personal friend, semi-retired, a fellow lodge member - but I always suspected that his office being on the bus route had the most to do with it.  No one had to have their day interrupted if I needed attention, I could just hop on the bus and be on my way and back in no time.


He was about my height but round as a basketball with an unruly mop of reddish hair streaked with silver and a thick mustache.  He favored three piece tweedy suits with a watch chain - very British - and an honest to God monocle that hung (but was never actually used) around his neck like a charm.  His office and home sat directly across from the Cambridge Common in an old and once elegant brownstone turned musty and slightly faded with age.  He was exceptionally hearty with a huge, bellowing laugh and a mildly lecherous manner, his blue eyes were sharp and his tongue could be acid but I liked him all the same - he'd never much cared for my mother which I considered an advantage - and his startling resemblance to Teddy Roosevelt was as entertaining as it was cultivated.


His wife, as short and rotund as her husband and nearly as loud, with a tidy bun of hair nearly the same color, might've stepped out of a 1930's film herself.  She wore long, silk dresses with lace cuffs and high ruffled necklines, a cameo brooch neatly pinned to her low slung but ample bosom.  There was a suggestion of whispering when she walked and her blue eyes twinkled with laughter when her husband gave her a shocking but affectionate pat on her wide bottom.  They were, I thought, a comical but well matched pair, perfectly suited to the fashionable section of Cambridge with its proximity to Harvard and its sometimes eccentric residents - slightly out of step with the modern world and casually but colorfully bohemian.


At the funeral home, however, up to his elbows in autopsy tools and bodily fluids, where each session began with Body is that of a .......the doctor was completely no nonsense and to the point.  He snapped orders to whoever was assisting with absolute authority, precisely dictating his findings and tolerating none of the routine death house humor.  The dead, he often remarked, were entitled to a certain dignity and his autopsy room would be run with decorum and proper etiquette - death was no trivial thing, rites would be performed and formalities would be honored.  Not for a single moment did it ever occur to anyone to oppose him, not the young apprentices who assisted, not the often present homicide detectives, not my daddy. 


While the public rooms of the funeral home - front office, chapel, visitation - were done in quiet shades of gray, dim, muted and sadly comforting, the morgue was porcelain and steel, a cold, stark, never mentioned, and windowless room.  The public rooms carried a reassuring light scent of furniture polish and flowers but the morgue smelled of antiseptic, bleach, and second rate air freshener.  Dormitory styled living quarters were sandwiched in between for the young men who attended mortuary school during the day and were on call or keeping an eye on my brothers and me at night - they came and went with alarming regularity and the doctor rarely took the time to learn their names.


I was eight before the doctor would allow to be present at an autopsy.  My curiosity - what my mother liked to refer to as a morbidly unhealthy fascination with death - finally wore him down and instead of roaring out
Impertinent! or Inappropriate! or Out of the question!, he shrugged and gave me a glare that strongly advised it would be most desirable if I were not to be sick or worse, swoon.  


Death, he told me as he slipped out of his tweed jacket and vest and into a starched labcoat, donned a mask and drew on his gloves, comes to us all as naturally as we breathe.  But the bodies can never hurt us.

Free Kittens

The sign was tacked to an old oak tree, crudely lettered.  Free Kittens, it read.  I tightened my grip on Nana's hand and tried to pull her toward it.

No, she said firmly, Absolutely not.  But I broke free and ran for the porch, nearly tripping on the weeds and debris before I reached the steps.  My grandmother called my name angrily, ordering me back at once, but by then I'd gotten to the front door and there, in a cardboard box lined with newspapers and torn blankets, were four kittens.  The mother cat, a handsome calico, slept in a nearby rocking chair, barely rousing herself at my arrival.  The kittens - two black, one gray and white, and one a calico like the mother, were curled up in tight, little balls, noses to tails and sleeping peacefully.  I held my breath, afraid to wake them, and then I was crying just because they were so beautiful.

Oh, Nana, oh, please, Nana, I begged, Just come look!

She shook her head fiercely and again ordered me back with an impatient stamp of her foot.  Knowing that there would be consequences, I wasn't in the habit of disobeying her but something inside me had grabbed hold and wouldn't let go. 

Please, Nana! I wailed pitifully. 

The screen door swung open and a young woman, very pregnant and with a baby in her arms, stepped through and gave me a tired smile.  She gently shooed the mother cat out of the rocking chair and sat down, taking in my tears and my grandmother's tight lipped expression in one glance.

Please can I hold one? I asked, Please?

They're all spoke for, she told me with a shake of her head, I haven't had time to take the sign down.  And besides, you don't want to wake'em.


My grandmother relaxed at this, I thought, and called my name again, a little more gently.  I gave the kittens one last, long look and reluctantly turned away.  


I expected a trip to the woodshed but instead Nana made me chocolate pudding and gave me a long list of reasons why we couldn't have a kitten - the dogs wouldn't like it, we wouldn't be able to take it home at the end of the summer, it would grow up to be a cat and then there would be more kittens.  I ate the pudding which helped a tiny bit and I listened which didn't help at all.  I was a long way from understanding that among the many divisions there are between people, most can be bridged to some extent, but the love of animals is either imprinted on your soul or it isn't - somehow I knew I had it and my grandmother didn't - and I suspected that it was the kind of thing that would never be changed.