Last week, I drove alone through three states, to and from a funeral. My cousin had died, at age 63, of lung cancer. She had an unusual life, but it's not mine to share with you here, and it feels somehow sacred and right to keep it private. Anyway, the heart of the matter is that I went to the funeral because of her mother--my great aunt, who is 103 years old and one of the people I love most in this world.
Due to her advanced age, I always expect to find my Aunt Ann looking frail and decrepit, but then she always surprises me by looking beautiful and (relatively) strong, her white hair neatly coiffed and hairsprayed, a little lipstick staining her lips like a kiss. I hold her soft hand and it reminds me of a child's worn leather gloves. I hug her tightly and we cry together. My grandmother--her sister--died when I was 14, and frankly, I was too young to fully appreciate her. But I'm very good at appreciating my aunt. I treasure each visit, fearing each one will be the last.
Another cousin kindly hosts me for the night, and we talk about the relatives no longer with us--the list sadly grows, but there are happy memories for balance.
The next day, after the funeral, I start the long drive back home. I travel through my old hometown, a small beach town on the southeastern coast of Connecticut. I pass familiar streets, the old houses of childhood friends, my grammar school, my high school (almost unrecognizable with its renovations), two churches I used to belong to. A flicker of memory is attached to each passing place. It's like a slideshow of my life.
I go a little out of my way to drive by my childhood home. The house is painted brown now (it was white when we owned it) and looks smaller than I remember. The new owners are taking good care of it, so that brings some comfort. But I don't think I'll ever get over the grand sweep of woods behind it being replaced by a posh housing development. That remains a dull ache, a lump in my throat, a splinter never fully removed.
I stop at the town beach and get out to take pictures. This beach--there's something so grounding, so comforting, about returning to a place that never seems to change. Even in winter, the beach draws some visitors. There's a person alone in each car parked at the beach's edge, eating a sandwich or just gazing out at the water, as if the answer each one is seeking will rise up out of the lazy waves.
I crouch down very low to take pictures of the bold seagulls flapping and strutting around the empty beach. A gust of wind blows and the birds hunker down, shivering on the cold sand. I realize I'm shivering, too, and head back to the car.
With each funeral and every ending, I think we learn that life doesn't get easier, but we do get to know ourselves more and more as the years tick on. With luck, we find the people and things that matter to us. We trust ourselves more, reaching deep down inside to feel on a gut level what works, and what works no longer.
At the end of last year, with the help of Susannah Conway, I chose two words to guide me through 2015: Contemplate and Radiate. Those words still resonate with me, but with a new year right around the corner, it feels good to have a new word to latch onto, a sort of guidepost, or theme. So in the spirit of really listening to myself--to what I want to keep, where I want to go, how I want to live--my word for 2016 will be Intuit.
Because I want to feel--deeply--what's important to me. I want to keep the most sacred things close.
I wish you a wonderful new year, filled with all of the people who mean the most to you. And thank you so very, very much for visiting me here!
I grew up in this pretty little beach town--East Lyme--and I don't think I fully appreciated it until I moved away. From Memorial Day through Labor Day, tourists (whom we residents less-than-affectionately called "summer people") flocked here in droves to park themselves on the town's sandy-white beaches. As kids, we tolerated this seasonal population boom, but I'm not sure we really understood it. What was all the fuss about, anyway?
After college, when I lived in Manhattan (quite a different town!), I would occasionally take the Amtrak train to Old Saybrook, where my parents would meet me at the station and drive me back to our East Lyme home. It was on one of those train trips when I noticed that almost all the passengers in my train car stopped what they were doing--looked up from their books, their newspapers, their various diversions--to simply gaze out at the shoreline view. It was my town we were passing through.
I think that's when I fully realized just how good I'd had it, growing up in this pretty little beach town. I still go back from time to time, to pay my respects.
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How 'bout you? Did you appreciate where you grew up?
I love visiting beaches in the off-season, after the hordes of tourists are long-gone and you can have the whole wide expanse of sand and surf to yourself. This probably stems from growing up in the (exceedingly beautiful) beach town of East Lyme, Connecticut, (photo above), where summers meant the streets, shops, restaurants, and beaches were filled with out-of-town guests (we called them "summer people"), and fall meant a return to "normal." Life in balance again.
Our children are remarkably peaceful when they're at play on a quiet beach. Recently, we were in Newport, Rhode Island, and they enjoyed exploring the little tidepools among the rocks, sharing their discoveries with each other.
If you've had a relatively happy childhood, I think that in adulthood, you're always trying to recreate or recapture the happy moments, and revisit the special places of your youth--if you can. For my husband, who grew up sailing with his family just north of New York City, he's still at his happiest when he's out on the water, and if he can't be out on the water, he's reading sailing magazines to relax after a long day at work. My own childhood, although also happy, gave me a very different view of peacefulness and personal bliss. Instead of the water, it was the woods.
I grew up in a small town in Connecticut, on a quiet cul-de-sac called Willow Lane--even though there wasn't a single willow tree in sight. Our neighborhood had no shortage of other trees, though, as all of the houses on the north side of the street had the woods to border their back yards, a sprawling range of trees that ran for miles and miles.
My bedroom window faced the forest. Each night, before climbing into my canopy bed, I would stand on my ladybug stool and peer out into the woods. In summer, my nose pressed up against the screen, I could see the little flashes of fireflies, traveling in drunken, weaving patterns around and about the trees. I'd fall asleep to the sound of peepfrogs and wake up to the first bird songs of morning.
About a hundred feet into the woods, just off the well-worn path, was a boulder the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, with the words MAGIC ROCK painted in white capital letters on its side. No one knew who had painted the words, but everyone knew the wishing procedure: Stand atop the boulder, slowly turn around three times, and make a wish--only one wish per forest visit, and no wishing on the way back out!
My sister, eight years my senior, introduced me to the forest. Each December, she would drive me in a wheelbarrow deep into the snowy woods, where we would select the perfect miniature Christmas tree for her bedroom. Carefully, she would dig around its roots, and we would plop the whole package, soil and all, into the wheelbarrow. Later that night, the little tree would sit in a bucket on her desk, bedecked in our homemade garlands of popcorn and cranberries, with a simple strand of white lights. After the holidays, my sister would transplant the tree to our back yard, at the very border of the woods. By the time she went off to college, there were five fir trees on the border of our yard.
In spring, when my sister returned from college, she took me into the forest again. The ground was soft underfoot, and the trees were in full bloom. Kneeling on the bank of a stream, we scooped out frog eggs, pasty-white jelly masses with black dots for centers. We carried them home in beach pails to study, and in a short time, the eggs separated and sprouted long, wiggly tails. Then it was back to the stream again, to send the tadpoles on their way.
In my sister's absence, my father became my guide to the woods. Although he tended three gardens in our own yard (two for flowers, one for herbs), he took it upon himself to be a caretaker of the forest. I accompanied him on his missions: clearing piles of leaves from the dirt paths, weeding out fallen trees, and with our bare hands, scooping out cold mud and twigs from a blocked brook until the water ran freely again.
On weekends, bright and early, my father and I would head out into the forest, followed at a great distance by our cat, Snoopy, whom I suppose was trying to maintain an air of feline independence. Snoopy never got within fifty feet of us, but then again, he never ventured off on his own path, either. We'd stop every now and then to make sure he was following, and he'd stop and pretend that he wasn't.
On our journeys through the woods, my father would point out different plants and trees, insects and animals. Over the fallen tree--an impromptu bridge across the first pond on our journey--past birch ("white bark) and mountain laurel ("white blossoms"), we'd make our way past thickets and tangles. Skirting poison ivy ("leaves of three, let them be") and the hawthorn bush ("needles sharp enough for sewing"), we'd at last come to the meadow.
Crouching amidst the tall grass and wildflowers ("Shh...not a sound"), we would almost always be witnesses to something extraordinary: a jackrabbit bounding about, as if on springs; a garter snake basking on a rock ("he won't hurt you"); a pheasant strutting cockily, looking for its lunch; a stately stag--despite its size, so shy and soft; a Native American arrowhead to take home in my pocket; the Big Old Oak, with its trunk so fat, it would take five children to encircle it with their arms.
As I got older (about ten or so), I got bolder, braving the forest on my own. A latchkey kid, I'd make secret trips into the woods when no one was at home. Once, startled by the sound of people a short distance away, I broke into a run and caught my leg on a jagged branch. Blood pulsed from the deep gash, but there was no time to stop. At home, I put on thick bandages and told my mom it was a gym class injury. I still have the scar, a slight, dotted line up my left shin.
On another secret solo visit, undaunted by the leg injury, I brought along my father's binoculars and hiked out to the farthest pond. Panning the scene at the opposite bank, I spied nothing new with my enlarged vision. Then I saw it--my heart jumped. It was my own first name, carved large and deep on a thick tree trunk. Preoccupied with conjuring up neighborhood suspects, I lost my footing on a mossy rock, catching myself just before taking an unexpected dip in the pond. That's when I heard it--a single, horrible "plop." The binoculars had broken free from the shoulder strap and had sunk to the bottom of the pond.
That night after dinner, my mother went to her studio to paint, while my father went to the living room to immerse himself in a book. I tiptoed in, trying not to shiver.
"Dad?" I whispered. He looked up over his eyeglasses. "Remember how you always say that I can tell you anything?"
"Yes?" He shut his book and looked immediately serious. "What's the matter?"
"And remember how you said you'd always love me, no matter what I did?"
"Yes, yes! Joy, please, what is it?"
I confessed the whole sordid tale, then braced myself to hear my punishment. But my dad didn't yell--he sighed in relief! The binoculars weren't that important, he told me; it was my safety that concerned him. He told me firmly not to go into the woods alone again.
Together, the next day, we retraced my journey, and I brought him to the sound of The Plop. With a long tree branch, he poked and prodded around the bottom of the pond. Then he tapped at something. With one long, careful lift, he raised the branch. The renegade binoculars emerged from the water, dripping with mud and covered with leaves.
After the binoculars were professionally cleaned, my father gave them to me to keep, for future forest trips--together.
The winter I turned eleven, I still didn't know how to ice skate. All of my friends were twirling and leaping on the town lake, but I was too embarrassed to learn to skate in public. One early Saturday morning, with my sister's old skates tied together and slung over my shoulder, I followed my dad to the Binocular Pond. He threw a large rock at its center. It thumped and skidded to a stop. "Safe to skate." After we laced up our clunky, impossible skates, he held both of my hands and glided backwards, and I clumsily trudged forwards and sideways on the blades. Around and around we went. He'd free me and I'd falter. Finally, exhausted from all the legwork, I rested on a rock while my father etched smooth, grand figure eights on the ice, not one sound except for his skates, clicking and wooshing across its surface. Snow had carpeted the forest with white velvet and the trees wore a hundred million twinkling diamonds, glittering from every branch. When morning melted into afternoon, we headed home for lunch. I didn't master skating that January, but I will never forget that day's perfection.
Although in our hearts, the forest was "ours," it didn't really belong to us at all. By the time I was in college, the woods in its entirety was sold to developers. The summer after my senior year of college, when I went home to my parents' house, I looked out the window of my childhood bedroom, only to see the single line of trees, a mere screen between our yard and the new yard behind ours. On the very edge of our property, where the woods once began, I could see the little ring of rocks that marked the burial site of Snoopy the cat. The grave was shaded by my sister's five "miniature" Christmas trees, by then so tall, they dwarfed our house.
But the forest is gone now; all of it, gone. Magic Rock, the tadpole stream, the wildflower meadow, Binocular Pond. In their places are new landmarks. Swing-sets and swimming pools, circular driveways, three-car garages, front yards and back yards, houses and more houses. For miles and miles.
It was many years ago that we sold our house. My parents have long since passed away. My sister and I live on opposite ends of the United States. Much time has passed; many things have changed. But when I close my eyes at the end of a long day, it's the old woods at Willow Lane that I'm picturing. I'm at the very edge of it, and I'm starting down the dirt path, following my dad, just as I drift off to sleep.
Dedicated to my father, Charles Johnson (1924-2002), who lived a green life long before it was the popular thing to do, and perfected the art of kindness.
