All posts by Wildtrumpetvine

Cape Cod, Family, Nature, Parenthood, Travel

That Satisfying Sameness on Shore Road

Shore Road, Route 6A, is our Main Street while we’re in Cape Cod, and I walk it nearly every morning.  As in our little cottage complex, major changes along the road are refreshingly few and far between.  Its scenery is almost as familiar to me as my childhood back yard.  My Shore Road walks serve to further sustain the illusion of timelessness in Truro. 

Fence-hugging hydrangeas, for example, which thrive in the moist salty air, are always bountiful and glorious.  

Typically, any changes along this thin ribbon of land by the bay are so subtle that they serve to reinforce the unchanging nature of the place.  Most of the homes and cottage groupings appear largely the same, year after year after year.  Routine maintenance, not extreme renovation, is the guiding principle.  The small structures of this condominium complex, above, continue to be nestled snugly amid the roses, much as they have been for nearly two decades.  Hours of diligent pruning, no doubt, keep the surrounding plantings looking luxuriantly abundant but not overpowering.

Nature can easily get the upper hand, if left unchecked, as it has above.  Each year, untamed, weedy foliage encroaches a bit more around this small, sagging, cupola-topped cabin.  Considering the high value of real estate along the bay, there are a surprising number of small Shore Road structures, some barely bigger than sheds, that exist in a state of ongoing gradual decay.  They appear to lack all creature comforts, but some show signs of sporadic human occupation.  This gives them an air of mystery that adds to their appeal. 

 

There are certain areas where the tug-of-war between nature and the attempt to subjugate it is particularly evident.  For as long as I’ve walked Shore Road, the large lot above has been occupied by a small semi-dilapidated cottage, whimsical bird houses on tall posts, and the occasional boat.  Some years, the foliage reigns victorious, as in the top photo, dating from 2013, where the cottage appears to float in a sea of tall grass and grapevines.  The following year, the weeds were mown and vines cut back substantially.  Flower boxes adorned the cottage’s front windows.  Near the road, a patriotic tableau had been assembled: a wooden bench painted like the flag, Adirondack chairs and a pot of geraniums

Since 2014, nature has been allowed its riotous advance.  Once again, the cottage is enveloped by high grass and unruly foliage.  The flag bench, its paint faded, appears to be sighing toward collapse, and the split-rail fence groans under a heavy tangle of grapevines.  The chairs have disappeared, and even the bird houses are in advanced decline.  The lighthouse is unrecognizable, and the caboose is little more than a façade.  (See Shore Road Scenes in Cape Cod, August 24, 2012.)  Next year, will the progression toward wildness and ruin continue?  Or will there be another effort toward taming nature and renovating the manmade?  I hope it’s one or the other, and not a dreaded third option:  a gleaming new structure that stands out starkly from the pleasantly worn and familiar Shore Road sights I cherish.      

I’m not averse to some instances of refurbishment.  Two years ago, for example, this rusty roadside owl received a coat of white paint and amber-colored eyes.  Such measured, unobtrusive alteration I can wholeheartedly support.  I appreciate it all the more knowing that it’s likely to be overlooked.  I enjoy thinking I know Shore Road the way I know an old companion.    

I can also welcome a unique addition that fits in well with that which already exists.  The gray shingled house above, with its American flag and rainbow banner bearing the word PEACE, looks essentially the same every year.  Several years ago I noticed an interesting vehicle parked in front, a small car colorfully painted with a variety of sea creatures in a folk art style.  This year the little car gained a sibling, a minivan painted with similar colors and designs: sharks, lobsters, fish and  sailing scenes.  A white plastic egret keeps watch from the roof.  The light-hearted, slightly eccentric spirit of these vehicles is in perfect sync with the PEACE house and with the Outer Cape.  (They remind me of the Key West Don’t Dredge on Me truck encrusted with sea creatures.  See Uniquely Key West, April 24, 2015.) 

It’s been five years since I last wrote about the Shore Road sights I hold dear.  As I began looking back and comparing this summer’s photos to those from earlier years, I was afraid that the idea of sameness might prove to be primarily in my mind.  Maybe my old friend has changed more than I’d like to admit?  

Generally, I don’t think so.  This narrow strip of land still seems to be largely immune to the accelerated pace of change that characterizes my former Atlanta neighborhood or the DC suburbs where I now live.  Every return visit brings this reassurance: the familiar sights of Shore Road, and its inimitable essence, they endure.  Perhaps I hope that through proximity, this immutability is contagious.  By spending time each summer in a timeless place, can I slow my own aging process?  Or at least feed the fantasy?  These days, it couldn’t hurt. 

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For more on this topic, see Back Again, on Shore Road in Truro, September 13, 2013. 

Family, Parenthood, Travel

In Cape Cod, the Illusion of Timelessness

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At the end of July, our family made our annual drive from northern Virginia up the east coast, almost to the very tip of Cape Cod.  Our happy summer place is an unassuming cottage complex in North Truro.  It looks out on the curve of the bay toward the Pilgrim Monument in Provincetown.  For two weeks every summer, a little gray shingled rental cottage is our home.  Why return to the same place year after year?  Once I didn’t understand.  When I was growing up, my family considered real vacations as rare indulgences.  With the exception of a few special trips when I was older, we made do with a few days accompanying my father to a public health convention in Jekyll Island, or a visit to help out extended family in Kentucky.  Had H’s family been in thrall to the same sort of thrifty practicality, they never would have packed up their young kids in a cramped VW camper and driven from Rochester to the Outer Cape in the summer of 1974.  They certainly wouldn’t have returned every year since.  And that would have been a shame.

Cape Cod seems an odd fit for a couple that doesn’t swim, sail, or even eat seafood.  But the unique beauty of the place casts its spell.  It gets under your skin and beckons you back.  My husband and I began joining his family there with our daughter when she wasn’t quite three.  Seventeen years later, it’s hard to imagine a summer that doesn’t include our little piece of the Cape. 

View from our picnic table:  across the sand and the bay, the Provincetown skyline.

During my husband’s family’s first visit to the Cape, they crowded into a one-room efficiency in a Truro motel, all five of them.  (The next year there would be six, after H’s sister was born.)  Quarters were tight, to say the least.  The proprietor could have been friendlier, but they chose to overlook his surliness.  When, while checking on a malfunctioning stove burner, he spoke with biting harshness to H, a meek seven year-old at the time, that was simply too much.  The Cape was wonderful, and they would return, but they would find another place to stay. 

On their last day, they took a closer look at a nearby establishment set back from the bay on a particularly wide stretch of beach.  It featured white dollhouse-like cottages grouped around two neatly manicured greens.  Each house had its own picnic table outside.  The interiors were basic, no frills.  Each had two bedrooms, a living room with a fireplace, kitchen and bathroom.  Some had covered front porches.  There was a big, new, sparkling pool.  Kids were playing on the greens and digging in the sand.  Families were cooking burgers and hot dogs on the little grills in front of their cottages.  It was a relaxed, friendly place.  H’s family determined to try to stay there the next year. 

Luckily, they succeeded.  H’s parents return to the very same white cottage still.  We have a cottage for the three of us, and H’s sister is there with her husband and two boys in their own place.  The wide, uncrowded beach has become even wider and therefore even less crowded.  All the sand eroding from everywhere else along the bay seems to be deposited there.  Otherwise, the appearance of the family-owned complex, in the same hands since 1967, has changed little since then, or even since the 40s, when most of the white cottages were built.  The atmosphere is still that of a big-hearted summer village.  The well-maintained greens are still perfect for ball games and water fights.  Several somewhat larger cottages, with more expansive views and open floor plans, were constructed in the 80s.   These are covered in weathered cedar shakes.  Accommodations throughout are still basic.  While microwaves and WIFI were added in recent years, there is no AC.  This is not the destination for those who require high-end resort living in a space worthy of Architectural Digest.  Head to the Outer Banks or the Charleston area for that.  But for those who yearn for reassurance that the Old Cape Cod of the Patti Page song still flourishes, this is the place. 

Ripley the Golden Retriever rests in his customary spot outside the office door.  He may appear to sleep, but his tail starts wagging when he senses the approach of a friend.  As long as I can remember, there has been a resident retriever keeping watch by those steps.  Before Ripley, it was Logan.

The “new” cottages, seen from the bay side.

The view from our kitchen, as sunset approaches and the shadows on the sand turn blue. 

The summer village we return to every year is humble, but it offers a priceless luxury in this world of ever-accelerating change:  the illusion of timelessness.   As I’ve written before, the pace of change is exceedingly slow along this part of the Cape.  (See Back Again, on Shore Road in Truro, Sept. 13, 2013.)  While the light and the sands are constantly shifting, the narrow strip of land, its scrubby vegetation and unimposing, weathered buildings, like those in our  cottage complex, appear much the same, year after year.  Here, it’s easy to pretend, for a week or two at least, that time stands still. 

A temporary time-out. 

Time out of time. 

Or the illusion of it.

It’s almost worth the drive.  

Family, Nature, Walking the Dog

Those Rosy Roses

It’s been nine years since we transformed our concrete desert of a back yard into a place where roses grow.  Every May, the vines burst forth in riotous profusion.  This spring’s long cold spell delayed peak bloom for about two weeks, but once the buds began opening, the flowers were as spectacular as ever.  The pale pink climbing roses on our garage trellis are subtle in color but especially flamboyant in abundance.  After their fabulous spring fiesta, they continue to bloom, but only sparingly, throughout the summer and into the chilly days of fall.  Even early December sees  a few persistent blossoms. 

 

The red double knock-outs along the fence stage their main event in May, as well.  They bloom throughout the summer and fall, with greater frequency than the climbers. 

Kiko’s good looks merit a handsome backdrop, but he cares little about the appearance of his surroundings.  This is, of course, one reason dogs are so well-loved by their people.  A dog is happy to be his human’s sweet prince, whether in a shack or a mansion.   

The battered appearance of our old garage doors didn’t hurt Kiko’s self-image. 

He could sit, proud and regal, on our old porch, even during the squalor of demolition.

But he hated the constant presence of a tether.  No matter how long, it typically stopped short of where he wanted to be. We revamped our porch and back yard not only to add some beauty to our little corner of the world, but also to give our beloved animal a space in which he could roam freely.  Our bounty of roses means even more to me because it represents the process that brought Kiko a greater measure of liberty.  My pursuit of happiness is tethered to his.  Everyone who shares a life and home with a dog recognizes this truth. 

May the roses keep blooming.  May my little dog continue to ramble from sun to shade, from squirrel to fox watching, in his pleasant domain. 

For earlier posts on our back yard transformation, see Up From the Concrete, Roses, May 12, 2012; and This is the Way the Roses Grew (And a Daughter, Too) Parts I, II and III, June 2015. 

Family, Nature

And, it’s Official. Summer’s Here!

In the midst of spring’s big chill, which threatened to stick around interminably, it seemed as though summer would never come.  What was it like to leave the house comfortably without sweater, jacket, scarf and gloves?  To sit on our screened porch without benefit of a heavy wool throw, looking like a shipboard invalid in an old movie?  I couldn’t imagine. 

Now, on this first official day of the new season, it seems like summer’s been here for quite a while.  Intense heat and monsoon-like rains bid a sudden good riddance to the lengthy cold spell.  And having brought our daughter home in May after her first year at the University of Virginia, we’re enjoying the illusion of a longer summer.  This is a much-appreciated luxury.  Last summer was for our family one of the shortest, with D’s high school graduation in June and the start of the college semester in August.  Considering my mother’s relocation to Virginia, it was also one of the busiest and most stressful in my recollection.  How pleasant it is to know that this summer won’t require me to finalize the packing up of my childhood home.  My calendar is blissfully free of travel plans. 

Memories of the recent deep freeze still vivid, once the weather began to warm up, I went into gardening overdrive.  I wanted our daughter, upon her return, to be impressed by the beauty of her home environment.  She’d been immersed in the spring glory of the historic grounds of UVA, so the bar was high.  Nearly every sunny day meant a trip to the garden center for more containers, more plants, more soil.  After the frigid cold of spring, the colors of summer appeared even more spectacular.  Our fountain, newly emerged from its heavy plastic winter wrapping, looked bare and dismal.  (Every December that fountain is the bane of my husband’s existence as he drains and wraps it to weather the cold.  He did not want a “water feature” when we reworked our back yard ten years ago, but my daughter and I persuaded him.)  But with pots of bright impatiens clustered around the fountain, it reminds me of those in Charleston courtyards glimpsed through wrought-iron gates.  Even H says it looks nice. 

I’ve experimented over the years, but found that petunias and trailing vinca vines are the best choices to fill the bowl-like containers atop the brick piers along the fence line.  They flourish in extreme heat and sun. 

Our hydrangeas are blooming this year in amazing abundance and variety of color.  Perhaps it was the heavy rains of late spring that encouraged such luxuriant growth.    

Kiko’s favorite summer activity is baking himself in the hot sun on the flagstone patio.  He lies panting alarmingly for extended periods.  When it appears that he may indeed expire with his next gasping breath, he struggles to his feet and trudges to a patch of shade below the hydrangeas.  Before long he’s ready to bake again. 

Whatever your summer pleasures, may you be able to follow Kiko’s example:  seize the opportunity and enjoy! 

Friendship, Nature

Frost in the Cherry Orchard

It is May, the cherry trees are in blossom, but it is cold in the orchard; there is a morning frost. 

–Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard

This sentence referring to the setting for Act I of The Cherry Orchard has been snagged in my memory since I read the play during my senior year of high school.  A blandly innocuous description, it shouldn’t have been particularly noteworthy.  But we were reading Chekhov toward the end of the school year, when the Atlanta heat and humidity were especially intense.  The school lacked air conditioning, and the class was in the late afternoon.  In that stuffy literature classroom, the idea of a May frost sounded impossibly exotic and refreshingly foreign. 

Here in Northern Virginia, it’s not quite May yet.  The cherry trees are in beautiful bloom, but the weather continues to feel wintry, prompting me to dig out my ragged, heavily taped copy of Norton’s Anthology of World Masterpieces.  As I re-read The Cherry Orchard,  I found myself back in that hot third floor room at Grady High.  Over the roar of the oscillating fan, our teacher is asking my friend Tedd, seated in the desk in front of mine, which Chekhov play he’d chosen to read.  The name of the play, somehow, slips Tedd’s mind for the moment, and we all sit in uncomfortable silence.  Our teacher rolls his eyes and prepares a sarcastic zinger.  I know Tedd chose The Seagull.  “The Seagull,” I whisper to the back of his head.  “The Seagull,” Tedd replies, just before Mr. Moate can comment. 

Memory is capricious and contrary.  My recall of necessary day-to-day details of life management (where did I put my mother’s tax file, did I actually pay that bill, what is that password?) is often hazy.  When called upon, my seventeen-year old friend couldn’t recollect the play he’d read the night before.  I hadn’t read it, but I remembered then that he did.  And thirty-nine years later I still recall that largely irrelevant fact.  To this day, I haven’t read The Seagull.  But I know at least one person who has.    

As for The Cherry Orchard, it spoke to me.  That year, in Mr. Moate’s class, I gained a valuable bit of wisdom about great literature:  it endures because it offers a powerful expression of enduring truth.  As a high school senior, I was impressed by the surprising relevance of this nineteenth-century Russian play.  The self-absorbed characters, each engaged in his or her own, if frequently interrupted soliloquy, occasionally approach but rarely connect with each other.  I recognized this behavior.  In a margin, next to highlighted passages, I’d written: Yes!  This is what we do!  When we wander too long in the isolated wilderness of our own minds, we let the people and places we profess to love slip through our hands. 

It’s been many years since my first reading of The Cherry Orchard.  I still play the role of daughter, but now as a middle-aged wife and mother, living in an exotic foreign land of the future.  I’ve seen frost on cherry blossoms.  And I appreciate the sad, true absurdity of the story all the more.  Chekhov’s characters and their perpetual inner struggles still resonate.  And if they were to find themselves here in this icy Northern Virginia spring, bundled in their traveling clothes, they could join our dog-walking group and feel right at home. 

Nature, Walking the Dog

Spring Snow, Tardy for the Party

The snow arrived, just as predicted.  Heavy, wet, and deep, it was our biggest snowfall so far this year.  It was indeed beautiful, but on this first full day of spring, its charm was diminished.  When the party is long over and the hosts are cleaning up, the appearance of a bold new guest tends to be less appreciated.  Where were you, Big Snow, in January or February? 

Family, Nature

The Promise of Spring

On this first day of spring, the fourth Nor’easter in three weeks is menacing the east coast.  It’s been dubbed Winter Storm Toby, apparently.  A cold rain falls here in northern Virginia, likely turning to snow later in the day.  March, we are told, has been colder than February for the second year in a row.  It sure feels that way.  Every morning, as I check the weather on my phone in preparation for walking with Kiko and our pack, I’m dismayed.  Another frigid day, often accompanied by biting winds.  I’d hoped to have packed away the long underwear by now.   

The famed Nation’s Capital cherry tree blossoms are on hold.  The forsythia is making only a half-hearted showing, as are the daffodils.  I’ve seen only one crocus.  It looked lonely, bedraggled, and full of regret.  Not a trace yet of the grape hyacinths I planted two falls ago that bloomed so beautifully last year.  Very few touches of green have appeared on winter’s gray-brown palette.  Spring remains in hibernation.

March really took to heart that old saying about coming in like a lion.  At the beginning of the month, our area, like many parts of the east coast, was besieged by fierce gale-force winds for two days.  Uprooted trees and branches, snapped like toothpicks, wreaked havoc on power lines, cars and some homes.  A huge pine sliced through the roof of a home in our neighborhood like a sharp knife through a birthday cake.  It narrowly missed the little daughter’s bed. 

We were lucky. We were spared any property damage, and no family members were trapped on roads or in airports.  Our daughter arrived safely home for spring break to a dark and rapidly cooling house, but we had no cause for complaint.  (Why, I wonder, must the week of spring break always be among the year’s coldest?  Some of the few snows I remember from my college days in Athens occurred during spring break.)  

When the winds at last died down and we ventured out to clean up the debris-scattered lawn, I gathered some of the branches blasted from our maple and cherry trees, brought them inside and put them in water.  Many of the buds have opened now.  Bright green maple seedlings and delicate white cherry blossoms attest to the promise of spring.  I have the evidence.  The season of new life may be biding its time, but it’s coming.     

Spring knew best to wait.  The rain here has turned to sleet.  Ice crystals weigh heavily on pine branches, and white patches are visible around the bases of trees.  May this spring storm be winter’s last. 

Faith and Spirituality, Holiday

Ash Valentine’s Day

This year, Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day both fall on February 14.  The two are unlikely bedfellows, so to speak.   

Ash Wednesday is a day for Christians to face our mortality head-on and clear-eyed, to gaze into the bleakness of what would have been, had it not been for God’s saving grace.  It marks the start of Lent, the forty-day period leading up to Easter, during which prayer, repentance and self-denial are encouraged.  Lent’s Biblical basis is Christ’s retreat to the wilderness to commune with the Father in preparation for his ministry. 

Valentine’s Day, on the other hand, needs no explanation.  For most of us, it involves the giving and getting of various treats.  It’s a day for indulgence, not denial. 

To Lenten sticklers for self-abnegation, the concurrence of Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day will likely pose a conundrum.  To deny or not to deny?  Chocolate or no chocolate?  Dessert or no dessert?  Wine or no wine with that special Valentine dinner?  Perhaps a compromise:  to begin the denial process on February 15? 

I’ve written several times about Ash Wednesday.  See: Looking into the Ashes (March 1, 2017), and Saved from the Ashes (February 10, 2016).  I’ve tried Lenten self-denial in the past, but I’ve been known to lose track of the larger purpose.  The season’s truly spiritual pursuits–prayer, Bible reading, penitential introspection–they sometimes were left in the dust of Ash Wednesday.  A couple of times, when I renounced all things sweet, my Lenten journey became little more than a period of dieting.  I wince when I recall certain instances of self-righteous forbearance that must have made me a most disagreeable companion.  See Mindful Eating, and a Mindful Lent (March 24, 2012). 

The purpose of Lent is to try to become more like Christ.  Instead, in our singular focus on denial, we become more like the Pharisees, those elite Jewish leaders who prided themselves on following every iota of the Mosaic Law.  They were probably among those Jesus denounced for ostentatious fasting:  “And when you fast, don’t make it obvious, as the hypocrites do, for they try to look miserable and disheveled so people will admire them for their fasting.  I tell you the truth, that is the only reward they will ever get.” (Matthew 6: 16, New Living Translation)  Jesus called out the Pharisees for their empty, showy arrogance and for the stumbling blocks they set up for others:  “You shut the door of the Kingdom of Heaven in people’s faces.  You won’t go in yourselves, and you don’t let others enter either” (Matthew 23: 13).  Overly zealous regarding trivial details, they missed the big picture:  “You are careful to tithe even the tiniest income from your herb gardens, but you ignore the more important aspects of the law–justice, mercy and faith.  You should tithe, yes, but do not neglect the more important things. Blind guides!  You strain your water so you won’t accidentally swallow a gnat, but you swallow a camel!” (Matthew 23: 23-24).   

On this Ash Wednesday, I look into the dark ashes and contemplate Jesus’s supreme sacrifice.  I give thanks that his unimaginable love lifts me from the depths of destruction and despair. 

On this Valentine’s Day, if I know my husband, he’ll come home with a big box of Russell Stover’s candy.  

During Lent, I will try to take Jesus as my role model.  I will keep my Bible close at hand.  And I will eat some chocolates.  I may also swallow a few gnats.  But I hope to avoid the camels.  

Happy Ash Valentine’s Day!

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Holiday

Hold onto Your Hope (Happy New Year 2018)

 

On this first day of the new year, as I look back to 2017, I must say “Whew!”  Last year was packed to excess with major life changes for our family.  It felt like a Netflix series with too many unlikely, simultaneous subplots.  I’m hoping that in 2018 I’ll have time to appreciate the scenery and enjoy some quirky character development.     

The stressful process of selling and packing up my mother’s Atlanta home, buying the Virginia house, the complicated logistics of the relocation–that’s all behind us.  Now Mama is next door, mere steps away.  While the two weeks following her surgery were perhaps even more miserable than her surgeons had expected, she can now move without excruciating pain, sometimes without the aid of her walker.  She made the trek on Christmas day from her place to ours and back, as I had hoped. 

The anxiety surrounding my daughter’s college decision is fading into the mists of memory.  After a period of adjustment, she’s very happy at the University of Virginia.  We all appreciate the fact that she’s a pleasant two-hour drive away from home.  An additional plus is that when she’s here, she has a greater appreciation for her parents (and grandmother).  Those mundane, homely comforts–my cooking, her own room, Kiko sleeping sweetly–all 0nce taken for granted, are now recognized as the luxuries they are.  And time zips by.  The breaks–fall, winter, and soon, spring–are upon us before we know it.   

When I was searching for an appropriate New Year’s photo, this one of my daughter as Glinda the Good Witch in her last high school musical, The Wizard of Oz, came to mind.  Glinda looks into the distance towards a vision of the glowing Emerald City, which, with a little help from her white magic, has just been revealed.  She’s about to send Dorothy and friends off on the final leg of their journey to Oz.  So in a way, she’s looking into the future.  Toward a new year. 

Glinda sings this song as she points toward the bright horizon:   

You’re out of the woods, you’re out of the dark,

You’re out of the night.

Step into the sun, step into the light.

Keep straight ahead

For the most glorious place on the face of the earth or the sky.

Hold onto your breath, hold onto your heart,

Hold onto your hope. 

We all get lost from time to time in the metaphorical woods.  But may you start out this new year on a good path, heading toward a good place, in good company.  When you wander off track, may you find your way quickly back into the light.  And may hope and love go with you.