Lighthouses and Low Tide

Married life, so the islanders said, generously enough, hadn't much agreed with Minerva. She left at seventeen to wed a ferry boat captain from Grand Pre and was back at twenty-one. Folks said there was a hard gleam to her eyes that hadn't been there before but to Ruthie and I, she just looked a little pale, a little more tired. That summer she took up sketching and we would often come across her, sitting alone in the late afternoon light, filling her oversized manilla pad with drawing after drawing of the lighthouse, the incoming boats, the low tide, the Westport sunsets. The sketches were uncommonly realistic yet all seemed to share a subtle sadness, a barely discernible sense of loneliness. Ruthie and I were too young to comprehend it but we knew without being told, that Minerva was somehow hurt.

“She's fine,” Nana assured us, “She's findin' her way back is all. Best you leave her be.”

“Back to where, Nana?” we persisted and my grandmother frowned.

“Back to a happier time, mebbe,” she said briskly, “I reckon you'll understand when you're older.”

As far as Ruthie and I were concerned, the list of things we would understand when we were older was getting to be depressingly long but Nana was firm. She gave us each a quarter and we trudged obediently out to mind our own business and fill the wood box.

In due time, Minerva's sketches found their way into the community and as had been the way for generations, eventually into the hands of tourists, one of whom happened to work for a New York vanity press that made calendars as a sideline. Dumbstruck and not understanding what in heaven's name all the fuss was about, Minerva agreed to sell her sketches but turned down the offer to have them published. The New York agent, a brash and thoroughly obnoxious young man who favored painfully loud ties and spoke with an East River gangster-ish accent, shrugged, settled and wrote a check which got Minerva through the coming winter and halfway through the next. More importantly, it bought her enough time to find her way back and the spring she turned twenty-five, she announced she was to marry a second ferry boat captain, a strapping young man from Antigonish with a fondness for poetry and pencil drawings.

Going through some of my grandmother's things after her death, I came across a slim book with a paisley and gold cover and the words Happy Endings printed delicately on the binding. It was an elegant little thing and at first I thought I'd stumbled across a journal but it was a book of sketches with a few lines of poetry under each drawing. Minerva's name and that of her ferry boat captain were neatly inscribed on each page. It was dedicated, With love and gratitude for the journey and all those who helped along the way.

I don't have much use for sentimentality. I don't keep pressed flowers or baby shoes or old love letters. Besides the rocking chair that was a wedding present over 40 years ago and a box of needlework Christmas ornaments that I don't put out, there's little or nothing in this house from my childhood or my life before or after I was married. I have kept Minerva's little vanity press book though.  I often need reminding that people can change their minds and keep hope for happier times alive.