My friend Flossie writes: So you were traveling. Thanks for telling us. Anything to share? Isn't the best part of a journey reviewing the adventures? Bears? Earthquakes? Crippling diarrhea? These kinds of stories told in a bar over a pitcher of, say, Sam Adams are more fun than actually travelling. By the way, who in their right mind goes on vacation and thinks about fusty old Thomism? You're right: yours truly.
I've not been able to get away, what with my new job, but I did spend a weekend with an old friend from my college writing program. She lives with her husband in a huge house on the very edge of the ocean in Cape Ann. What a view of the vastness of the sea!
She told me as she showed me around that it had been in her husband's family for years and that every summer each of the branches of the family had rights to take a turn staying there for the swimming off the rocks, the boating, the tide pool dabbling, or the sunset cocktail sipping on the veranda.
The morning after I got there, two of her nieces arrived each with a friend. There was lots of bustle as they settled into something like a bunkroom in the back, then hustled down to try the water at the tiny beach at the foot of the garden. It was clear the attractions of the place had been oversold. The water was cold, we geezers were boring, and the nearest night life was half an hour away. The stories the family kids told of what they had loved about the place didn't cut any ice. The bumptious youngsters headed out that evening to mix with their own kind at a bar. It was Saturday night after all.
My friend and I sat on the granite ledge looking out over surf breaking over the rocks, and swirling in the guts and fissures between and watching the moon rise over the heaving water. We spoke with some amazement about the fact we were there, she marrying into this extensive Yankee family late in life and me just escaped from my most recent romantic incarceration. Isn't it wonderfully strange when we stop and ask, how did I get here? If we had thought as young girls what we would have to do to end up on those rocks as we were, a little sad but happy, it would have been a tightrope we'd have had to walk. But, unthinking, we made the right and left turns that had brought us there.
Do you know what I wish? To have been able to somehow paint or otherwise preserve the image of that rising moon and the two of us old women looking out at it. Oh, to be a Winslow Homer. Wouldn't that be more than all the philosophy you and I have steeped ourselves in.
I've not been able to get away, what with my new job, but I did spend a weekend with an old friend from my college writing program. She lives with her husband in a huge house on the very edge of the ocean in Cape Ann. What a view of the vastness of the sea!
She told me as she showed me around that it had been in her husband's family for years and that every summer each of the branches of the family had rights to take a turn staying there for the swimming off the rocks, the boating, the tide pool dabbling, or the sunset cocktail sipping on the veranda.
The morning after I got there, two of her nieces arrived each with a friend. There was lots of bustle as they settled into something like a bunkroom in the back, then hustled down to try the water at the tiny beach at the foot of the garden. It was clear the attractions of the place had been oversold. The water was cold, we geezers were boring, and the nearest night life was half an hour away. The stories the family kids told of what they had loved about the place didn't cut any ice. The bumptious youngsters headed out that evening to mix with their own kind at a bar. It was Saturday night after all.
My friend and I sat on the granite ledge looking out over surf breaking over the rocks, and swirling in the guts and fissures between and watching the moon rise over the heaving water. We spoke with some amazement about the fact we were there, she marrying into this extensive Yankee family late in life and me just escaped from my most recent romantic incarceration. Isn't it wonderfully strange when we stop and ask, how did I get here? If we had thought as young girls what we would have to do to end up on those rocks as we were, a little sad but happy, it would have been a tightrope we'd have had to walk. But, unthinking, we made the right and left turns that had brought us there.
Do you know what I wish? To have been able to somehow paint or otherwise preserve the image of that rising moon and the two of us old women looking out at it. Oh, to be a Winslow Homer. Wouldn't that be more than all the philosophy you and I have steeped ourselves in.
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