Ghosts

So I am running down the road. I see cars going by and, as usual, I cannot see the faces of the drivers because they whirr by too fast, or my eyesight sucks, or the light is harsh and reflective. But this evening I see people driving who are long dead and gone. My mother, for instance, and Lloyd Fowler, and Townsend Shean. They don't acknowledge me as they pass. They look real as the real thing. They are not ghoulish or skeletal or crazed. I want to talk to them, say, "Hi, Mom" or "Hey, Lloyd" or "Townie! It's been too long?" but they are gone and my mind is tricking me. There have been other times, when I've been driving through a city and I see someone and I actually try to follow them, but they are only prompters and catalysts in the end. I hope I see more of them. I like these visits from the dead.

Shower, Commando Style

At sunset, Halloween, I return from an evening run and enjoy the outdoor shower overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. I recollect other Halloween's. This is the first one that I have not spent with my daughter who is now thirteen. I am getting old, I think. I remember the Halloween with a friend and his young daughter, driving through the suburbs, house to house and way beyond the neighborhood on a cold and rainy night. She is out of college now. I remember several evenings on Hawley Mountain with the obsessive, eccentric Stewart Mott and his increasingly intense Halloweens there. It was always the final stop of our evening. We could sit by a fire, faces burning, backs cold. down below, on the poorer end of Waccabuc, the streets would be filled with kids and the sight and smell of menthol shaving cream. Tonight, I hope no one will drive down this long drive; if they do, all they will get is an apple, because that's all there is to give.

I shower exposed to anyone who might happen to be walking down the right of way path to the river. As far as I know, no one has been watching. And tonight, at sunset this Halloween eve, it is even less likely that someone will happen by. My daughter's friends refer to my showers as "commando style." They are too self-conscious to take their bathing suits off when they return from the beach. I guess they may have been spying on this middle-aged dad. Should I be flattered? I suppose I should. "Commando style!" I find this amusing.

Within a few days I'll be shutting the house down, disconnecting the water for winter, blowing the water through the copper plumbing with a compressor so that it will not freeze over the winter. The shower has been the hit of the summer, supplanting the indoor baths and its indoor shower counterpart. It is so grand, washing outdoors with an amazing view across meadows to the sea as the sun goes down. Maybe I'll be lucky and this summerlike interlude will continue for a few more days, so that I can be a commando in the evenings, one more time!

The Son of a Preacher Mam

The son of a Presbyterian minister wrote me a note and asked me if I would read his "common essay" for applying to universities this year. He is a nice kid, and he is smart and has much to recommend him. But he has a flaw. He either is, or he seems to be, arrogant. He wrote an essay about an experience he had had at a religious retreat, and how, protected, white, privileged, he fell silent among others in the group, thinking he might not have much to share, since they were less sheltered than he had been. Some of them had experienced hardships he would never see. Only years later he decides how much he actually knows and had to share, a day late and a dollar short. The problem is, he is still the same person, slightly evolved, but still aloof and more full of his own wisdom, part of the narcisism of senior year in high school. I am afraid that the College Admissions reviewers will read his essay as a superficial treatment by a glib young man of an interesting topic. I have tried to suggest that he rewrite the piece, but expect that my comments may not be very well received. Having once been 18 and just as conceited, I am sure, I suspect my attempt to help will be rebuffed and my self and opinion to be reviled. A bit later, I am surprised pleasantly to learn that he agrees with me, at least on the InterNet, characterizing his essay as a bit "dickish." Interesting choice of words, thought I. He never showed me his final draft, however. In another forum, we debate the service of offering to write and edit application essays. It is common practice today, but has ethical complications, not the least of which are economic ones. Who can pay for the best services gets in, it would appear. The world is filled with people who want an inside track, an edge, with people who, in the extreme, cheat. The issue points out the difference between academe and the "real" world, between playing by the rules and no holds barred competition. It is an interesting issue to consider, even while opting to go ahead and hire a service, or offer your services to those who demand them.

Indian Summer

Today is a Sunday extrordinaire, a day of balmy breezes and sun blowing off the past few days of rain, fog and gloom, if only for a while, postponing the inevitable. True fall colors have emerged on this Halloween, and Indian summer reigns. So what am I doing? I am working inside, carpentering in a closet because I am on my own for over 24 hours and feel that I should take advantage of the uninterrupted block of time instead of the blessing of nature. It will be a beautiful night for the kids who will be trick or treating on College Hill without me. I will miss them, but the trade off is that Sophie needs more of this kind of independence from her Dad. So andiamo. My pleasure will be a short run later in the afternoon, before it becomes too late to take advantage of Nature's gift.

Crash

Today would have been Farleigh Becton Dickinson the third's 55th birthday. A former classmate reminded me of this. He said "I just remember those sorts of things." He visited Terry's grave on the Vineyard one time. Strange, but the kind of unusual recollection that I am wont to have. I was telling my daughter about Terry, as in Tertius or Third, and how we used to climb to the top of the silo at the old Kent School dairy farm and lie there, way up high in the full tower, smelling the sweet smell and probably sweating in the heat it generated. Back then we were good friends. We would climb into the caves below Numeral Rock. I remember building a fire in one, once, I am sure it was strictly forbidden, but I was oblivious to many of the rules back then, as I remain semi-oblivious to them today. Terry flaunted the rules himself. His death was attributed to an overdose of opium and or LSD, in the winter of 1969. He was a freshman at Columbia University, played guitar with Chris Donald and some of the group that became known as Sha-Na-Na. Terry was among the brightest of many bright kids that I grew up with and went to school and college. October 29th is also famous for the stock market crash of 1988. What can we learn from these unrelated disasters? That they always catch us by surprise, that whatever "is" can change in a fraction of a second. Life can only be predictable only in the largest sense of the word. In the microcosm, the existence of the self, there is infinite room for random outcomes, walks along the path or into the wild. Although many argue the case for preordination, I do not. I see chaos, separated only by a desperate grip and great good fortune.

Training the Untrainable

There are no bad dogs, just bad people. I am seeing the light with our two daschunds. They may not be dumb as posts, although I reserve judgement about Cosi. Woody is tuning into his new choke collar. Cosi is a bit slower. This is only lesson two, and damned if they haven't stopped pulling on the leash and tearing off into to brush. We had a setback, however, when Woody broke the metal ring on his collar. I yelled loud enough at him that he stopped, or I caught him, or both. So much for the cheapo collar from Wal-Mart. On to a pet store, I guess. Pretty pathetic when the chain last for all of two wearings, wouldn't you say? In about a week, fifteen minutes a day, I think these untrainable dogs will be partially trained, even middle-aged dogs that they are. This is important work as the dogs will soon be liabilities in Providence. I am worried. I am the worrier, remember.

October Meets November

When it becomes so cold as to be a distraction from functioning other than to eat and heat, it is time to move. When it becomes so quiet that your own thoughts reverberate and echo through the cranial interstices uninterrupted, then it is time to move. When the dogs follow you everywhere and get underfoot because they wonder what the hell is going on and why it isn't noisy, bustling or effulgent, then it's time. But it is not quite time, yet. It won't be very long. The fall is well along. The boats are fewer, the clouds are many and the winds are often strong. And this is nothing at all, just a hint of what will surely come. It won't be long. I hope we find shelter from the storms.

Hope Club

So... Mission accomplished! When it becomes so cold here, about mid-November, that all we can think about is how to keep warm and eat, and jump into beds layered with blankets and duvets. We have a room at the Hope Club, founded by the patriarchy of Providence near the turn of the 20th century. It is ancient. The rooms are "circa Eisenhower," that is, the 1950s. Perfectly genteel. Affordable, too. It is going to be an experience. No denim. Coats and ties in public rooms. And so on. just like the Ivy Club. Amen.

Two Dog Nights

I am sleeping in a twin sized bed. What a lie that is; 'twin' what? Anyway, that's what I am doing. The house is unheated, but we have plenty of blankets. Last night was cold enough that both daschunds sleep beneath the covers, albethey outside of the sheets. I awoke with Woody's head beside me on the pillow, with him licking my neck. It was 5:20 and time to get up, time for him to eat and go outside. Cosi was more or less the same. Eat, pee and scratch on the screen door. She is so dense that she never comes back to the same door she goes out. So she scratches at the far door. I don't always hear her, but she's trained me to look out for her. That's the thing. Maybe she's just smarter than I am, waiting for me to come over to her view of the world. I don't know. But when they watch me at night for the rigiht moment to leap up onto the bed, I consider it a great honor, being included in the animal kingdom, where for a night and when I am close to the icebox, I am top dog. Excuse me while I go out and piss on the perimeter of the territory.

Autumnal Tints

Henry wrote about them. Witness to the leaves of his Concord, turning from summer green to the yellows, reds, browns and golds of Autumn in New England. Even this morning, with a mild northeast wind and a shoreline mizzle dampening the complexion of this day, the colors of the woodbine and the swamp maples, the beeches and wild cherry trees create a palette that improves upon imagining. How is it that nature never clashes, that its random hues are compatible, beautiful and inspiring? How is it that this natural kaleidoscope can completely overwhelm whatever darkness, shades of gray and damp depression? It is like the hardwood fire that blazes. As long as the vision is there, or the tactile warmth radiates deep into the soul. This is the time of transition between swimming and bathing suits to sweaters, wook mackinacs, fleece and down duvets to ward off the approaching chill. The evenings come earlier, the early morning rise is pitch black. The process is steady, even stealthy. It is gradaual but I am feeling that it is more swift than ever.

Gwen

I am thinking about Gwen, pregnant, across the waters of several sounds in Amagansett, too allergic to the dust and molds in her 'new' old house in Greenwich to live in it, staying out there by herself all week. And here I am, largely by myself, not that many miles away as the crow flies, though I'd need a pair of heavy duty Jesus feet and a following breeze to get over there on water. I am thinking about how much I thought of her last year when we worked together all those months before she married, how much fun we had, the smart hardworkers in an army like crew of bores.

We worked closely together one spring and summer and into fall, sweating, eating, getting dirty together while planting shrubs and hauling tarps filled with dirt and clippings from the perennial borders we maintained. We represented the 'can do, get it done' end of the crew, maybe not it's finesse, but not so bad either, and we worked well and often as a team. At lunch, we would break off from the crew in order to buy unhealthy lunches together from the Greek Gyro truck, and just to get away for a few minutes. The Greeks assumed that we were wife and husband, an intriguing assumption, as far as I was concerned.

Gwen is practical and no-nonsense in the garden and elsewhere. She is decisive. In looks, she is cute, blue-eyed, blond, pettite, and very fit and strong. She is quick-witted and sharp-tongued, or quick tongued and sharp witted, but not well-educated. She has a chip on her shoulder about those who are. She's seen enough spoiled princes working at a restaurant bar in Easthampton. She knows what she knows and doesn't know, which means to me that she's smart. And I represent exactly a type she normally disparaged: Ivy League, private schooled "preppy," a WASP, a snot born with silver spoon. Yet here I was, working hard and helping everyone, never putting her down or treating her as the redneck from the North Fork of Long Island, which by her self-description, she is.

And I never "hit" on her, which had to be novel because she had always worked in places where nearly everybody did, she is that cute. Yet there was always a tension, at least for middle-aged, long married me, a yearning controlled by the ego or the super ego or whatever inhibits and separates us from our iddish, animal selves. I must have been among the very few. I think she appreciated it. She even told me how much she "loved sex" and how alarmed she was, about to get married, and that she was sort of having to give it up since her husband to be did not really seem to care much about it. Was she asking me for a final fling, being a tease? I thought about it. Gwen could not have known how much I ached to rediscover sex, something I gave up with marriage, and certainly after the birth of my daughter, trading the pleasures of as Alice crassly put it, "new ass" for the security of a best and trusted friend. Actually there was plenty of sex until we had a child, and then there was none. Zippo. God knows, I think about it all of the time, but the complications of trespass on a marital trust are so many and so complicated that the act of betrayal to my wife, however sexless our relationship has been, limits me to lusting in my heart or mind and makes its consummating it improbable.

Is it really any wonder though? What if we had wandered over to the gazebo opposite Riverside Yacht Club, or hidden behind or inside a sculpture in that garden in Back Greenwich, or on the rooftop garden next to the Round Hill Club, by the pool overlooking Long Island Sound, or even in the cab of the Ford Ranger, with the tools and fertilizers? I might argue that a latent, unrequited ache may be superior to touching flesh, but ask me whether I really believe this to be so. So much hesitation on my part. I am filming my own reality television show, "This Is My Life" and we only have one life to live. It seems that I have spent a life of wishing and not doing. Sex with Gwen would have been great, that's my own best guess, but its consequences--who knows--might have been devastating because making love might have been so powerful to this middle-aged man with damaged self esteem that he or we might have become more involved than I could predict, and involvement is something that one cannot control. I am reminded of the line in a Ted Hughes poem, "Love struck into his life like a hawk into a dovecote." Imagine all those feathers, the commotion, droplets of red blood on white plummage.

Small Town

Arrogant New Yorkers, be wary. This is the dawn of the Boston Red Sox' victory, coming from three games down in a best of seven series ending at 12:01 in the morning, the "biggest comeback in baseball history." I cannot argue the facts here, it was just too late for me. I am just repeating what I've heard, that Boston won in heroic style in Yankee Stadium is incontrovertible.

So, at the gas station, I say to Andrew, the manager: "A hard morning for New Yorkers," and he smiles, agreeing with me. Mike, the one-armed garbage man, AKA "Flip" says: "New York is the financial capital of the world." And I say to Flip, not calling him the name we knew him as when we were little boys: "Mr. Harrington, I thought that Saudi Arabia was." And he said, "All the money in the world still couldn't buy the series for the Yankees over the Red Sox." No one in this little New England town seemed terribly dismayed. So Andrew tells me to look at the picture on the door going out. After looking at all the wrong pictures, postings and cartoons, there I see the picture of W Bush and in a dark suit standing next to Flip, also in a business suit. What's wrong with this picture? Flip-Mike-Mr. Harrington comes over to see the photograph. "Holy shit! That's me with the president!" I guess it was some kind of trick, a computer morph job, merging two separate images into one, the way they do it on the cover of The National Enquirer, since the two had never met.

Everyone laughed. Even though it is nearly November, the days shorter and colder, people seemed in a genuinely fine mood today, especially for having stayed up so late. Thanks, Yanks! Thanks for putting the curse of the Babe to rest after all these 80-something years. It was a kind and gentle thing, from the softer, unglimpsed side of gentle owner Steinbrenner. Just think how, in a single game, he cured the collective psyche of hardcore New Englanders, not to be confused with Yankees. It is something to give thanks for at Thanksgiving, an early Christmas present to beat all presents. They say in these parts that there will be a lot of deaths in the coming weeks, people who have been hanging on all these years just to see the baseball miracle of the past century now may breathe a final breath and expire.

Dad the Busman

I've made eight round trips to Providence and back within the past 24 hours. I know the drive very well, every lane change I need to make, as well as the exits I need to bail out on when the traffic backs up. There are always anomalies, but my lane changes are not random at this point and unlike most of the time when they are, they make a real difference as we fine tune the commute. For example, I know that it takes from 40 to 42 minutes without hang-ups. And I know that the traffic flow is different when we are a mere five minutes late or early. So far, it has been A.O.K. But, eight trips leaves me little time for much else. Fortunately, this will change on or before December when we move to town for the winter. I am looking ahead to that time, and hope that the old diesel will keep on keeping on, like the reliable car that it has always been. I have been thinking, too, that the daily proximity of daughter and father in the car is leading to a closer bond than we realize. We go through many moods together, not always our "best selves" to be sure, but our real selves, just as certainly, and more important

Rodentia

Goddam rodents! They are everywhere, chewing, shitting, destroying, in closets, drawers, packed boxes, clothes. They piss on things. They make me profane. I hates them. I poisons them. I traps them. I buys more poison, and yet they still come, come for more, and more and more. It is an invasion, but I shall prevail. There are only so many of them, a finite number, and only so much time to breed, and enough poison, or so I think. Perhaps it is time to think about a cat? This would be great entertainment for the daschunds. I can see it, a kitten, sneaking up to pounce upon a sleeping wiener dog. So, rodents, beware! Mind what you eat, and there may be a pussn'boots in your future. Which is the worse way to go: by poison or the customary, slow, sadistic torture by a feline? "I hates you mices to pieces," said the cat in Mighty Mouse. And I'll second that emotion.

Back Home

The real estate game is underway. What in summer was worth from $X to $Y yields so few visitors as to be ridiculous, and many brokers, but no offers. What has changed? The "hot market" is cooling down? The fall? Uncertainty in the marketplace, uncertainty about the election, uncertainty in general? I can smell it now; drop our price three weeks into the process. This must be in their knowledge base from the getgo; nothing's truly different. In the meantime, we are going to run out of money if our house does not move. I smell something stinky in the air. I smell collusion; I smell the stench of realtors and cronies and crony buyers, vultures with bare, ugly heads who wait for the client to wither a bit more, and die. The timing is so fragile, and the result could put us in either heaven, or hell.

Those Conservatives!

Nancy and her mother arrived two hours late for lunch. No matter; it gave me more time to prepare. I was thankful for their self-centeredness, and they had called me on a cell phone to let me know. Everything was really fine, up to a point. The sun popped out and dried everything off and warmed the front porch enough so that we could sit outside. I marinated salmon and grilled it. They drank chardonnay from the vineyard down the road, green beens sauteed in olive oil with garlic and pignolia nuts, and a salad made with fresh corn from the fields atop our laneway, basil and tomatos. Nancy brought the desert, a sort of pound-corn-apple cake, which was delicious. Someone, maybe it was I, brought up the debates of the previous night and that led to politics and that led, in turn, to some short sentences with near harsh words. Sally and I loathe the present, Republican administration. We are Liberals, with Kerry-Edwards stickers on our car bumpers. We think it is important to say we are for the Democratic ticket, that this election will be that close in November. We cannot see how anyone with a brain could say that they will vote for Bush and Cheney. The Dunce and Darth Vader. The Monkey and the Man. The mother commented that she thought Edwards was positively "homosexual." We thought, how mean of you in the first place, and so what if he were in the second. The lady gets her information from Rush Limbaugh. No wonder! We get ours from NPR, PBS and the New York Times, all media that stand accused of having a left-handed bias. Although I am not egotistic enough to say that I am right and she is wrong, I do believe that Mr. Bush has done major, irrevocable harm to the image of the United States abroad. I find his lack of curiousity appalling, and the fact that he speaks English as though it were a second language for him helps make his irresistible charm quite, entirely resistable. Consdervatives seem to mistake consistancy for leadership and strength, and find ideas threatening. I prefer to think that changing one's mind is proof one has one. I think Kerry is articulate and that he embraces ideas. The image of a phoney Texan on a soapbox, sounding smug and ignorant and sure, for four more years is a disgraceful thought. May it not come to pass!

The Northerlies.

A fresh northerly has been rattling the windows for about three days. Whitecaps abound on the Sakonnet, coursing seaward and building as they past the camp. There is only limited fetch here, so they do not get really huge. Perhaps if all were well it might be a pleasure to run before them and haul off towards Buzzard's Bay or in the opposite direction, toward Long Island Sound, so long as you could plot a course along the lee shore. These northerlies are nothing compared to those of December and the winter, winters when you can walk or skate across the salt marshes. This mortherly is aharbinger of what's soon to come, but without the numbing conviction of sub-freezing weather with it. Just standing outside, right now, with temperatures in the low 50s, gives me a deep chill. It won't be long now. Where we--our house--sit now is uninsulated, atop a mountain of stone where we are exposed to miles of unobstructed Canadian wind. My daughter is excited by the prospect of snow and cold while I, speaking for myself, am content to wait as long as I can hold out at very least, for the inevitable. When the sun comes out, the water is a dazzling blue and when, as it is mostly today, the low clouds obscure the sky, the water surface is a more foreboding green-gray hue

Winter Quarters

We have a place to live, starting December 17th! It is the 1790 third floor apartment overlooking Providence. There are two working fireplaces, a garden and a porch, a small but renovated kitchen and bathroom, crooked floors. It is small, but very cozy-looking and so much, much more charming--quaint, the girls all choose to say--than everything else I've seen. We have a handshake agreement. We will stay through June, with an option to extend the lease. Sally likes the place. Dogs are welcome, as long as they do not damage things. We are going to have to figure out where we'll be between November and Christmas, of course, but it should not be so hard. I think this situation and its timing are just about as good as we could hope for. And there remains this matter of selling our house in South Salem, the long financial shadow. But you know, I think it is going to work out. It is all going to work out fine!

New Friends

Sally would not let me call. I wanted to make sure everything was O.K., and I wanted Sophie to know that I--we--was thinking about her. "Good night, sweet dreams, I love you" as we always tried to say before nodding off for the night. True, I had said this in the morning, when I dropped her off at school, but after a month or two of being Mr. Mom, she is constantly on my mind. I am learning what it is like in the way single parents must, in the way most dads do not have the opportunity to be involved, totally. So I listened to Sally. The logic was simple: if she was having a hard time, she would have called us. If she wanted tdo come home, she would have told us. If something were wrong, the parents would have called to tell us. But that is just the logic. I still wanted to call.

So late on Saturday morning I called to figure out how to connect with Sophie. She and her new friends were out on the street selling goods they had baked the night before. That's what they had done at the birthday party; stay home with four or five girls and eat and cook things. How simple and old-fashioned, just staying at home! What fun! They did not fly to Palm Beach on a chartered 737. They did not go to the mall and buy things.

"So... how was it? Did you have fun?" Well it was all as plain as can be. Girl meets another girl at new school. Old girl is looking for something new, some of the kids have been mean to her; the new girl meets a receptive person who knows the ropes. They find many common interests, in piano, in horses, in the seashore and sailing. They share many classes by some coincidence. Both are very good students. They roll on the hallway floor with laughter when Sophie whacks another student on the head with a plastic water bottle while being demonstrative, swinging her arm out with an unexpected flourish. No one was hurt; it was just so unexpected. They sit together on the floor eating dorritos out of a bag in silence while the other girls have gone to sleep. The new bond makes all the difference this fall, it makes the social transition a wonderful success, out of a potential, though unlikely, disaster. When Sally and I come to pick her up, Sophie is out selling cookies and cakes. We sit down and eventually have a glass or two of wine, a sandwich and a tour of the neighborhood. We like the parents. Right now, this feels like it is going to be a nice thing, all around!

Uncle Nose

Uncle Wiggley is also Uncle Nose. I might have named him that, but I cannot quite remember why. He has a nose with patrician character. Not a DeGaullian nez, nor a Jimmy Durante Schnozzola. A nose with a slight break in it. Uncle Nose looks positively dashing in the pictures of his youth. I just visited him. His daughters flew in from Lake Forest last night, worried. I guess worry runs in the family. Anyway, Bill-Wiggley-Nose-Uncle or Not is back in his senses from a bad place at the beginning of the week. The problem is serious, and the daughters are not going to remedy it. Bill cannot remember how many of the white ones and how many of the pink ones he must take every day. A caretaker can come in, but when it comes to this point, it is pretty far along. Bill doesn't want to give up his independence. Moving out is the last step before the grave in his estimation, and I'm not disagreeing with him. The issue is when to intervene, and that time is not far away. Were I to be as lucky, I can look ahead to nearly thirty more years before this, were I as lucky!

In the Garden

The women bend and kneel. Armed with Felco #6 pruners and little, very sharp garden scissors, they move from bed to bed, a steady stream of talk often accompanies them, along with laughter. Sometimes they work silently, though less often. They are efficient, working steadily to pare the deadwood and old blossoms. Their patron is a perfectionist. She wants her garden immaculate and full. she may not get dirt under her nails anymore, or ever for all I know, but she knows exactly what she wants to see. Time is not as important as doing the job thoroughly and with art. These women are professionals in both art and plants. They enjoy their work. They respect their patron, who respects them. And they all love their perfect garden.

The Wait

Sally says it will do me no good to worry. I worry a lot, she says and I agree. I am a worrier. This is not a new thing. I have always been a worrier. As the coxswain on crews, I worried about everything. It works for me. That's why, to my own way of thinking, it does quite a bit of good to worry. To me, it is like the lawyer's mentality of finding what is wrong before it becomes an issue, like submitting a sealed bid, forgetting to include something as being "non-responsive." I
have a boy scout-like "be preparedness" retentivity. It comes from self-protection, or protecting one's family or friends, I think. Thinking things like: carry a pocket knife or a spare tire inflator, it might come in handy. Or sailing with Lloyd years ago, always keep that champagne cork, it might plug a through-hull opening, which one time out in the middle of the deep blue sea, it most certainly did. It is thinking of preventative maintenance, looking ahead, around the turn in the road. It is anticipating winter from the comfort of summer and the fatness of fall, remembering the sere and cold of winter. Did I haul and split enough cordwood to get me by? It is a northern, not a tropical philosophy. It is not "manyana. . ."

And so we wait. When will the sale of our house occur? Will it occur in time? Will we be OK in time for winter? This is the antithesis of "things will take care of themselves." I think that's what Sally's problem with my worrying is. She believes fear or worry paralyzes people,and that nothing happens, and "nothing..." we learned from Shakespeare, "will come of nothing." And I don't want to be busy for the sake of just seeming to do something. I need to worry. And worry myself into doing something right.

Uncle Wiggly

Uncle Wiggly actually isn't very wiggly at all, and he isn't an uncle, either. It's too lengthy an explanation for this moment. He is a great guy. Unfortunately he is losing his mind. He is in his mid 80s and he lives alone, with very few visitors. About ten years ago he lost his ability to speak and swallow whole foods to cancer of the throat and tongue. He had a lovely voice and he still has a sparkle to him, through it all. It is very difficult to understand him when he speaks, and almost impossible in a situation where there is ambient noise, as in a party or at the beach or just about everywhere, so he eschews most social occasions. And he shies away from personal commitments beyond those he is genetically related to for the most part. He wants none, not even a dog, though several have wanted to share their lives with him since his wife, Aunt Bobbie died.

Aunt Bobby was really a first cousin, but she was exactly the same age as my mother. Aunt Bobbie's mother was my mother's oldest sister. When his dog passed on, Bill said that he would never get another one. He loved his dogs over the years. They would always do peculiar tricks, like balancing a piece of food on their noses until Bill would say "paid for" and they'd snap the meat in the flick of their nose, the blink of an eye. I think the drill came from the Brothers Karamotzov, I'll have to check though. So he is starting to get lost, wandering the premises on his own, doing acrostics and crosswords ad nauseum. It has to be a terribly lonely life.

As a young man just out of Harvard, he was shot down in his plane and became a prisoner of war in a Japanese camp for a year. He was presumed dead and back home his parents had a memorial service for him. At war's end he returned, miraculously, having lost more than a third of his body weight. It took him half a century to distill them, but he wrote poems about the horrific experience. A Japanese guard, it turned out, had received some education at Harvard before the war, and threw Bill a scrap or a cigarette every once in a while. He knelt before a prison guard not to genuflect before his god, but to save his own life. Uncle Bill would never talk with anyone about the War. Why would he? People would have chattered lightly. They would not have heard what he was saying. So there it lies, within, scarcely expressed. He will take it with him, but he does not believe there is a heaven or a hell.

Caveat Emptor

The first offer is the best one? Is that the rule for selling one's house? We've had an agent, a buyer's representative, the rep plus the couple she represents and now the daughter and her parents and the broker all come through our house in the past three days. Sally met them. she says they're about perfect, that the house is about exactly what they are looking for, that the woman is a landscape designer, that they love old houses. But one must avoid getting too excited. The dance continues, on the other hand.

In the meantime, I want to forge ahead in Providence, but our hands are tied until our South Salem real estate moves. How nice would it be, were we able to segue from there to here so seamlessly? How nice, were these people to say "yes, we want it" and meet our asking price! It is a lot to hope for, but why not? Caveat emptor? What they see is what they get. Don't kick the tires too many times, you fools, or we'll both lose the sale. We have no tricks up our sleeves. And old house is an old house is an old house!

Yesterday... All My Troubles...

Up to pee at three. Lights out in the River. Flashing searchlights, a green strobe. Several boats circling. Up to stay at five. Still out there: did somebody fall overboard? What's going on? I shower. I shave. The dawn throws light on the situation; I see nothing. Was it a dream? I am driving my daughter to school and I havc no time for this right now, but several hours later, I am back and I notice a fishing trawler, about 75 feet or so in length, has gone aground off Church Point. It was there all the time, but a branch obscured it and the shadow of the dawn light screened the ship from view. I watched all morning and into the afternoon as over the next few hours a large tug and a smaller, rubber hulled boat approach the wreck. The smaller boat, having little draft, carries a large diameter hawse from the tug to the boat in distress. After about twenty minutes of hauling into the northerly, 25 knot wind, the "Jaguar" (I can read its name through the binoculars) suceeded in pulling the "Seven Seas" clear, and they both headed upriver towards Tiverton. I imagine the bottom of the trawler must be pretty substantially dinged up, but otherwise appeared no worse for wear. Something else must be wrong with her, however, since she continued the tow until out of sight. I think my cousin Chuggy helped to build this boat. I wonder who has the egg on the face, now that the emergency is over?

Providence

It is time for a change. After years of stasis in suburban New York, we are on the move! New school, new community, new place to live, a new job. It is exciting, a calculated risk, a change. We--our family of three, plus two dogs--are zeroing in on a place where our interests coincide, finding a geographic locus with a rich personal heritage. We are jettisoning the suburban land of real estate for a city richer in spirit. The risk is that we are going from large market New York to a smaller venue, Providence. And what if we may find it to be true that one cannot go home again? My Uncle Joe, who is both rich and wise, yet who barely knows me, thought we would be missing New York "five or six years from now." We will learn this in time. We approach the move with the pragmatic advice of a friend, knowing that nothing is perfect, and nothing lasts forever. So bring on the changes; let's see where they'll take us!

Agents of Change

We've got to sell the old house to move to a new one. Since the timing is too tight and the sale is highly unlikely to be immediate, we will rent a place in the interim, attempting not to over-extend ourselves financially while exploring the alternatives at the same time. A possible buyer visited our house before the broker's had their "Open House." It seems as though we might already have a good prospect.

And the owner of an apartment in Providence called to ask whether I was still interested in the apartment he showed me a week ago, the one with the old fireplaces and great views. Who knows? Good things are in the wind.