when i was very young, we used to spend summers at nana’s house, a big old stone colonial covered in ivy, back yard stepping down to the little harbor of this fishing village north of boston.
cape ann. which, in my kid’s mind was only fitting, since my mother’s name was anne.
it was a time of immense freedom and exploration, tethered to the warmth and surety of this house and the adults who did whatever adults did… kids, well, we did pretty much whatever we thought of: rowing the little dinghy around the harbor, up under the wooden plank car bridge that bisected it midway (galumpa galumpa galumpa…), so intent on our pirating we risked forgetting that the tide could leave you stranded in the mudflats unless you timed it right. or on foot we’d wander across the bridge and up the tiny twisted streets to the highest spot, crowned by squam rock, a granite humpback that offered one barely navigable route up its steep weathered side. up top, though, you could sit for hours and watch the ocean, the harbor, the lobster boats pulling pots, across to wingaersheek beach (accessible only by boat, blonde as barbie, just as compelling and enticing to a 9 yr old)…
i say ‘we’, but often it was ‘me’. my siblings and close cousins were all official teenagers, 4 to 7 yrs senior to my still-single-digit, and i was usually tolerated to come along on adventures, but if that didn’t pan out (mahhhmmmmm…!), there was a whole world of wonder to be discovered solo. i was happy on my own, fantasizing my way through the morning, usually near the water, barefoot on the rocks at low tide, dancing over barnacles, popping seaweed bubbles, rowing through the quiet harbor. my uncle fred had a small sloop moored just off nana’s pier and floating raft, about 20 metres out, one of many vessels that spent the summer dotting the water, turning to face the tide, weathervanes pointing toward the ocean wind.
one summer dawn i was out in the dinghy, rowing slowly in the heavy hush and stillness between the boats. i pulled up to uncle fred’s boat, looped the painter around a cleat and climbed aboard. it had a small cabin with a couple of berths, a tiny galley, not much more room. this morning, the berths were home to my cousin freddie and his friend wes, who had spent the night onboard (oh, to be 16 and sleep on a boat!). i suspect there had been some … err… carousing the night before, but this was not the wonderful realization that re-shaped my sense of the ‘possible’, it was the half-eaten, leftover tinned soup in the saucepan on the tiny stove that freddie, having awoken to my arrival, casually polished off for breakfast. oh, man, that is living! to realize the choices you have, the boundaries you can stretch, the almost infinite variety of decisions to be made. and in truth, more than half of those choices would be disastrous, crazy, harmful, dumb, maybe lethal… but the others, the unexpected, explorative, curious, non-conformist … those represent a perspective, allowing yourself a bit of freedom in how you perceive the world and your path in it.
let’s call this the ‘leftover soup theory’. we’ll see this crop up in later years, or maybe we’ll see this as having been the path all along; it was just a eureka moment that solidified (congealed?) in my mind. looking more closely at the events leading up to LST (and just because i normally abstain from the shift key {see title…} doesn’t mean i disdain it’s necessity. it is often important for punctuation, or clues ( 9 is > ?; LST = leftover soup…), or censorship (f#@k, lighten up!) …
yo, back here! looking more closely at the events leading up to LST, it’s curious to note that my early years were both somewhat traditional and non-conventional. my father actually was “father” john, an episcopal minister, sometimes with a parish, sometimes without (during a stint in nyc (don’t!) on the national council of churches, doing god only knew what… literally). we always lived in a church-provided house, and during the ncc period, our home was in old greenwich. still close to water, big ol trees to climb (and to fall out of, like my sister chloe and her broken arm), huge sprawling lawns to play kick-the-can on til dusk and beyond when mom would call out the door “i’m giving your dinner to cinder!” (our labrador)…
while my father was working this administrative gig, he had, at 38 or 9, a serious heart attack that took months to recover from. all things considered (and they were many, and complex, and unknown to a 6 yr old), it was decided he would take on a parish again. the choices i believe included omaha, san francisco and maybe another midwestern locale. we, and by that i mean my parents, chose san francisco. that’s another story itself, but the aim of the digression is to reveal that my father, after barely three years as the loving and much-loved pastor of a small urban parish, died suddenly one spring afternoon of a massive coronary. as his life ended, ours changed dramatically.
a month before my 9th birthday; my three older sisters in junior and high school, my mother college educated but never formally employed, instead the rector’s wife, the social warden of the parish, keeper of the home, raiser of the children. three thousand and more miles across the country from her own home and family and support network, she decided quickly and bravely to move us back east to burlington vermont, my father’s previous parish and my birthplace. here were good empathetic friends, a small manageable city/town just a few hours from siblings and cousins, a welcoming familiar new england environment.
this was may of 1960, and in that summer are these memories. while my mother, widowed only months before, battling grief and the unknown, worked and searched to find a job, a house, our schools, a future… i wrapped myself in this summer at nana’s.
that’s why leftover soup was such a big deal.
i was busy. i was mostly unsupervised. i was free to be a kid. i think the adults reckoned that may well be my last hurrah before the overwhelming reality and the inescapable fact of death and change closed the door on my childhood and ordered me to grow up. little did they suspect…
kids learn about life’s cautions, deceits, rewards and potentials constantly and from every influence. sometimes an equation is solved, or it’s grandeur revealed, by an ordinary remark or an innocent situation. my uncle fred (sailboat, hence leftover soup…? ok, ok, just checking…) was a kind, loving, nor’easter type of guy, gruff but cheerful and always puttering. i’d often hang around while he was mid-putter, and be included in the process. once we were moving a number of things, dunno, maybe garden tools, sacks of soil or grain, boxes…, and i filled my arms up with as much as i could carry, and uncle fred said “johnny! for heaven’s sake, that’s the lazy man’s way. make two trips!”
if you could pack a whole notion of how (or not) to approach life and it’s trials and demands into a single four word phrase…
jmidworth 