A foggy, rainy day on post-Christmas Cape Cod. Everything about being at home is annoying. The sink is clogged. The cats are unaffectionate. A fifty dollar gift certificate to the bookstore is burning a hole in my pocket.
Too many other people have the same idea, so it's off to the back roads to avoid the traffic. It's getting foggier. I find myself in Eastham, meandering around abandoned cranberry bogs and empty beach houses.
At times like this I usually go to Fort Hill, but today I turn towards Coast Guard Beach. Haven't been here in years, I know, but as I approach the main house:
I realize I haven't been here since my fifth grade class spent a week living in this building. I remember clam chowder in the dining room, dune jumping with Mr. Monaghan, and that cute boy Alex Boyers breaking his rib on a rock while playing touch football.
I try to find the rock.
There are tourists here, but they are the quiet, reverential type, and we give each other a wide berth as we cross paths on the beach. Some boys are surfing further down the shore. the waves are high and it is loud.
I realize it is a day for making a large batch of quahog chowder, for standing at the kitchen sink and shucking clams, for licking the clam juice off my fingers and nibbling on smoked bluefish and crackers while the potatoes simmer.
The waves crash around my ankles and the cuffs of my jeans are now wet. Sockless, my feet are crusted with sand from the winter beach.
A pleasant, low drone of silence enters my mind, breathes, expands, and forces out the chatter that had been rattling around for days. Waves crashing, clam broth simmering. A briny, windy peace.
2 comments:
So I've wasted away all morning and the early part of the afternoon reading your blog. One of the things I like most about you is that you talk the way you write, or is it you write the way you talk? Anyhow.
A few things in response to the Year in the Life of You:
An integer is a number- positive, negative or zero. A Real number is a rational number, pretty much anything BUT an imaginary number (which I never quite caught onto except the imaginary number was always denoted with an "i". Not very creative those math-types). The Mean is the taking the average of a set of numbers and the Mode is picking out the reoccuring number in a set of numbers.(I was in the SMART math class). Yes, you should get out the the beach more. And where the hell are MY damn wolly socks? I guess I'll have to forgive you because you're busy and stuff.
Thanks for stopping by and putting your blog on my Favorites, it was very modest of you to do so.
I just finished last night's leftovers for lunch and I think I'm sick of it now. Now all I have to do is talk about my hair...
I have NEVER claimed modesty as one of my talents. I don't like to brag.
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