Not So Far-Sighted

Photo Credit: Dad

Two weeks from tonight I will be on a plane to Boston. And in Boston I will pick up a car and I will drive to a small town past Falmouth, past Hyannis, past Chatham. I will drive on highways and state roads until a rotary. My turn off the roundabout, in what will now be the middle of the night, is an overglorified running path that rolls past a harbor and over a bridge and some wetlands.

After passing tiny streets like "Widgeon" and "Governor Prence," I will see a small mailbox and a post that no one else notices and it will look like I'm turning straight into the woods. My windows will be down and it will smell like bayberry and pine needles and juniper and the tide. It will be very dark but at the top of a graveled hill there will be lights through some spindly trees. The light will reflect a bit on glossy black shutters only to be absorbed by weathered cedar shingles covering the house. Once the car is parked, I'll go into the house and find my mom with a glass of wine in the kitchen. This is the only night we'll overlap and time is limited for her to pass the torch and the keys and small reminders about the washing of sand off of feet.

In two weeks I am taking the longest vacation of my post-college life. For nine days, a revolving door of favorite folks will be in and out of my favorite place and I will be sharing it with several of them for the first time. And for my part, I will be there long enough to try some new things and new towns while still making time for mini-golf.

Sun and clamrolls and sand bars and beach bars and boats. Mornings and galleries and bike rides and porches that watch the sun set on the water every night. This is not the Cape of Kennedys. This is further out, past the breakers, past the hoopla and past the streetlights.

I will focus now. I can do that. I know enough about salt tightening the skin on my shins and sunhats and whaletails to know that what's waiting is worth the work preceding it. I have to earn my ice cream cones.