Gnarled fingers wrap around fraying canvas handles. Hunched over with the
weight of milk and eggs, celery and carrots in an initial-embroidered Bean bag
(they all look the same on the ferry, uh-yuh), the female elders of the island
trudge up the shifting metal platform to solid (granite) land. They don’t ask
for help but accept a hand if there happens to be a willing one nearby. They
have sunspotted arms and faces and don’t bother wearing makeup most of the
time. Their hair is short and a spectrum of uncolored grays.
Who needs to
bother with such things on an island where the leaves change from deep green to
fiery red to earthy brown each year and the transformation and march towards
decay is a welcomed spectacle?
Where the tides are continually altering the lines
and curves of the shore with their ebb and flow.
Where time is (truly) kept by
(summer) marriages and (winter) deaths and (keep the school going!) babies
born.
Where the technicolor sunsets are generally remembered more often than the fog shrouded sunrises.
Where you know your neighbor and their neighbor and so on in a circular
path around this island of (about) 350 (births, deaths, weddings) and everyone
knows what you look like without makeup and hair dye anyway but they also still
remember you as a child jumping off the pier or when you would go cod fishing
with your husband when there were still cod to fish.
They are the fiercest, most beautiful women I know.
She has reached her car. Not a car, but a truck. I am surprised. I was
expecting a beat up sedan (the car of choice on the island where cars go to
die) with torn seats and muddy floor mats (only $300 from a nice young man on the mainland). How will she climb into the cab?
How will she see over the dashboard? How will she navigate these narrow roads?
Of course she could do it by feel and probably does. She slings her Bean bags
into the truck bed and smiles as I walk by.
She radiates confidence.
I want to be her in 50 years. But I want to learn
from her now. I want to learn from all these elders with soft hands and mighty
stories. On an island where tales of the sea, of farming, of childhood and
marriages are told and retold and listened to because that is what you do when
you stop by someone’s house not for sugar or to complain about their dog but just
to say hello.
To stay for a cup of tea in a warm kitchen with a fire in the wood stove and a cat sleeping on
the seat next to you
To sit with another person
until the talking is done, without glancing every five minutes at your phone or
apologizing for having somewhere else to be.
To let go of schedules and anxiety
because fall is here and the summer people are gone and it is time to breathe
and watch the yellow leaves from the birches swirl to the ground and create a
carpet of gold on the island floor.
I look down at my own sun spotted (freckled) hands carrying Bean bags. I
wonder if I will be lucky enough to own a truck to climb into when I am 85 and
drive to my home among the pines and maples and birches. As I climb into that
truck with these hands that will grow happily calloused with many more stories, will I have a younger woman unintentionally cock her head and smile? Will
I know exactly what she is thinking and smile right on back?
If I have my way and I make it that long, You Betcha.
But for now I will sit, listen, and love these souls that inspire with every hunched, gnarled, and absolutely beautiful step.
