Take Me Home, Country Roads

There is a road that runs from our cottage in Maine down through the Webhannet Marsh and to the ocean.  It is exactly one mile and the fine, sensible residents of this small town gave it the fine, sensible name of “Mile Road.” Often I will run on the shoulder of this road, past the marsh grass and laughing sea gulls, the tasty smell of fried haddock wafting from Billy’s Chowder House, onto the wide sandy beach and each time, it is like coming home.

My thoughts are free to run as well and this time they take a jog through my thirteenth year, when I was a skinny, pizza faced, metal mouthed adolescent who preferred sitting in front of a piano to the football games on the TV that my brothers were constantly screaming at.

 

“Can you stop playing that stupid piano, doofus?”  my brother Chuck would shout.

“Can you stop playing with your organ?” I’d shout back and fist-a-cuffs would ensue.

My mother grew concerned that I spent too much time at the piano and not enough time in front of girls. So she enrolled me in the local youth football league where she hoped that some quality time spent sweating, grunting and tackling other boys might somehow shift my perspective. 

It did not.

I was not aggressive enough and soon became the laughing stock of the team.  I would ride my bicycle out a half hour before practice and hide in the trees across the street listening to my mother shouting out the back door “Bee-uhl!” she gave my name two syllables “It’s time for practice!”

As my mother wizened up, my avoidance tactics became more creative. 

“Mom, the John Denver concert is tonight and you know how much I love him,” I lied.

My mother’s eyes narrowed as I weaved the story and advised me that I could go to the concert on one condition, if I brought a friend along.  My heart skipped a beat.  I had no friends.

I called up all of the neighborhood boys that used to be my friends and one by one they declined.  I would pay for this at school the next day.  My brother Chuck displayed a surprising sense of fraternal affection and agreed to go with me.

“Man, that Starland Vocal Band can sing!” He boasted when we got home referring to the warm up group, “They’re going to be around a long time,” he prophesized and then sat down and began to strangle his guitar attempting to master “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin.

Eventually I moved far away and married the high school quarterback who likes to shout at the TV during football games and we bought a home in this small corner of Maine where the fine, sensible folks said “Why not?” when asked if same sex marriage should be made legal.

My mother came for a visit recently, joined us and some friends at a local piano bar for drinks and songs one beautiful summer night. “Are you two brother and sister?” a slightly inebriated young nearsighted gay man asked my mother, much to her delight and to my chagrin.

“Bee-uhl, tell them to play Country Roads,” my mother asked me and I complied.  I regarded her face, flush from a pink cosmo and the tasty compliment as she sang two octaves higher at the top of her lungs with about thirty other bellowing gay men. I kissed my husband Paul, gave my mother a hug and for all the world,  it was very much like coming home.

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Good Lighting

Our cottage in Maine is not so much appointed with furniture as it is with light.  The sunrise paints great blocks of yellow rectangles and sunset’s final kiss leaves a rosy blush at the end of the day, which is generally when I ask Paul to take my picture.  The light is gentler then and as the years progress, I have begun to appreciate good lighting.

If there is anyone else who appreciates good lighting, it is our utility company.  Paul has completed no end of “lighting projects”.  Seems there isn’t a spot that could not benefit from a little more illumination; the space above and below the kitchen cabinets, the area behind the TV, the wall above the sofa and even the margin below our bed.  Dark corners don’t stand a chance in our home. When I say that Paul lights up my life, I mean it quite literally.

On a recent cool September evening as we sat by the communal fire pit, our neighbor Michelle leaned back in her Adirondack chair, warmed from the fire as much as from a glass of wine and mused out loud, “We just love looking up at your cottage; it always has such a nice glow with all of those open windows.”  She paused and smiled while gazing into the fire and then added, “By the way, where did you get that dresser in your bedroom?”

The heat in my face was less from the fire and more from the blood rushing to it as I mentally rewound the tape from past nights’ bedroom activities, damn Paul and all of his lighting. But I understood what she was saying.  There is a comfort in a lamp’s glow or a flickering television when viewed from the outside on a dark night.

It says that there is life here.  Someone you love has left a light on for you.

As the fire danced and the children screamed and squealed while chasing an unfortunate frog, I began to think of this past summer, of the shortening days and lengthening nights.  Soon enough the long days of summer would be memories and I was not so keen to let them go.

So I catalogued them in my mind: the marsh bisected by a river of silver in the early morning fog, the walk along the sandy trail while the crickets chirp in the beach roses under the fierce midday sun, the splintered sunlight, like millions of diamonds sparkling on a blue velvet ocean, the slanted light on Paul’s face when I meet him at the train station on a Friday evening. 

These are the little lights that I leave on for myself, to illuminate the dark corners of a cold winter’s night. 

This is good lighting.
 

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Sunflower

We would always pull up a chair when Ron began to tell a story.  It wasn’t so much because he knew how to weave words together in a way that held us in breathless anticipation; nor was it because he was a master of the surprise ending.  It was more because we wanted to be comfortable while he rambled, often losing sight of the story’s point.  After a good amount of time, he would reach the end of the story and invariably end it with his signature dismissive phrase “And all that kind of stuff.”  Story over.

Ron was a tall, thin man with a large nose, big heart and a warm smile.  You couldn’t really mention Ron without adding “and Dean”.  The two were inseparable.  When Paul first introduced them to me, he referred to them as his gay fathers.  They were not, in fact, related to him by blood, but they were by heart.  After I met them the first time Ron issued an uncharacteristic short reply when Paul asked him what he thought of me.  “He’s a keeper.”

If I can’t separate the words Ron and Dean, it is even harder to split apart the words Ron and summer. Paul and I would drive up to southern Maine on summer weekends and watch our cares wash away with the tide.  The days seemed to stretch out wider than the blue sky.  At night we would always meet Ron and Dean, who called Ogunquit, Maine their weekend home.

I should correct myself.  It wasn’t Ron and Dean, but Ron and Crystal Chandelier that we would meet.  Dean is a slight, quiet man, but his alter ego, Crystal Chandelier is like Oprah, all hair, make-up and personality; but whiter, blonder, much thinner and a vision of glitter, feathers and sequins. Ron always coordinated his suits to match and would stand tall and proud, nodding and basking in the glow.

One summer the four of us rented a cottage together.  It would be the first time that I met Dean as himself.  I am ashamed to admit it now, but during the early part of our relationship, I often wondered why a man would find another man who sometimes dressed as a woman attractive.  While we sat on the deck on a sunny afternoon that summer, Ron began a story with twists and turns and diversions that taxed my ability to find a point.  Every time I thought the story had reached its conclusion, Dean would join us on the deck with a drink; each time looking more like Crystal.  When I asked Ron how long it took Dean to complete the transformation he quipped “Four hours and a bottle of booze.”

Finally, Ron reached the conclusion which was a story about the first time he saw Dean. “He was wearing only a pair of jeans, a feather boa and walked right past me.  I thought, that’s the guy for me.”  Just then Crystal appeared, a blinding vision, and said “If you are going to do something, it’s only worth doing if you do it all the way.”  I could then see what Ron saw in Dean.  It wasn’t the hair, make up or glitter.  He loved him because he bloomed in the light radiated by Dean's fierce heart.

When we went into the club, people clamored to have photographs taken with Crystal. They were celebrities. Ron stood lovingly by Dean’s side reveling in the glow.  At one point during the evening I began to notice more men join us offering to buy me and Paul drinks.  After we left, I mentioned to Ron that their celebrity had benefits.  He looked at me and flatly said “They didn't buy us drinks because of Dean.  They bought us drinks because when you were in the restroom, I told them you used to be a gay porn star.”

Eventually summer ended and Ron’s own story reached its conclusion. His knee started acting up six months ago. Cancer had spread from his lungs to his entire body.  He didn’t burden us with this knowledge.  He simply stood in the background nodding like a sunflower until the end. But, I know something now that I didn’t know then.  I underestimated Ron's ability to weave a wonderful story, capable of great humor and a surprise ending.

And all that kind of stuff.

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The Marginal Way: 100 Words

There is a place where water, sky and earth meet. On a narrow strip of craggy rocks, a path meanders for one and a half miles dividing lush green lawns on one side and the lonely beauty of the New England Sea on the other. Pink beach roses nod in the sun and mist. A grove of sentinel cedars bend to form a shaded canopy. Under this shade couples have paused to search for answers in the deep blue green sea. And the sea’s response is as slow and sure and steadfast as the rising and falling tides.

 “Look within.”

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A penny for your thoughts

Neat rows of corn and tobacco plants flicker by the car window like the spokes of a wheel. Hours go by without a word spoken between us. Then my father’s voice breaks the silence as he pats my leg.

“A penny for your thoughts?”

There are complete conversations in my head, but I offer up “Nothing.”

“Must be awfully lonely in that head.”

He reaches out to pat my leg again, but misses as he looks at the road straight ahead. He smiles, lights another cigarette and exhales a curling snake of smoke.

“Yep, awfully lonely.”

I turn my head to look at the green fields of North Carolina stretching into a forest of trees on the horizon and wonder where they end.

Floating on my back in the frigid Maine Ocean water I find memories of my father caught in the hollow of the waves tumbling over and over again. I point my feet towards the shore and let the sun warm my face, wondering for a moment if I am still thirteen and have just dreamt the last thirty five years.

I stand up, turn around and see a single white sail leaning into the wind brilliant against the blue sky where it meets the water. Turning back toward shore I see Paul on the beach and breathe a sigh of relief.

I join him on the beach. We lie on our backs and let the sun dry us. An hour goes by before he turns toward me, opens one eye, squinting from the sun and points a finger at me. “What are you thinking about? Right now!” He says this in a quick way to signify that I cannot change my mind or interpret my thoughts.

 

“I was just thinking I wish I was a professional writer”

“But you are a professional writer.” He says

“Technically, I would have to be paid.”

“Well, I could pay you.” He says

“You wouldn’t be paying me for my writing. That might make me a prostitute, but not a professional writer.”

“We have college bills to pay; maybe prostitution is the way to go.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a man approaching four hundred pounds in a thong swimsuit walk towards the ocean.

“I’ll keep on writing.” I say.

The day stretches into evening as we join our friends on the front porch of the Inn while a full moon floats over the pine trees. Paul is recounting a story from his trip to Wells to buy cheese.

“It’s a good day to be Irish. Do you know what we’re talking about?” Paul is quoting the shop owner.

“No”

“We’re talking about the English; they all want to be Irish.” There is disdain in the shopkeeper’s voice.

“Well, I must be conflicted, because my mother is Irish Catholic and my father is English Protestant.” Paul says

“Well at least you’re not one of those queers!” The shopkeeper says.

“Actually, I am.” Paul says as he grabs the cheese and walks out.

We are dumbfounded as we look at the wedge of brie sitting on the table. I grab the knife slice the cheese, take a bite and say. “Homophobic brie is actually pretty good!”

I am thinking about Paul’s story while we sit in traffic on the trip back to Boston; the sunny days of the weekend already fading into memories under a cloudy sky. Paul looks out of the corner of his eye at me and says:

“What are you thinking about? Right now!”

I consider saying nothing, but then “I was thinking even though strangers may hate me, I’m glad that I don’t hate myself anymore.” Paul pats my leg and smiles. I look through the window of the car, past the traffic and close my eyes.  There is a single white sail leaning into the wind, brilliant against the blue sky where it meets the water.

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