Weathered
Traffic was nonexistent as my dad headed south on Route 24, taking us to blustery Cape Cod, to meet our cousins for Christmas school break. Judging by the complete lack of humanity on the roads, vacationing on the cape wasn’t an overly popular idea. Smart money vacationed in places like The Bahamas or Florida, where they could let their bones defrost, but we were choosing a winter rental, with access to an indoor swimming pool, and I wouldn’t have traded it for a hundred winters at some warm, perhaps even exotic destination.
Soon we were crossing The Bourne Bridge and exiting just one third of the way around the rotary toward now-familiar roads through Grey Gables. We were headed toward Mashnee, in no time flat. The causeway was particularly narrow, with wind-swept sand, heavy with the weight of rock salt and Old Man Winter, slowly turning two lanes into one skinny lane of passage with the turbulent ocean on both sides.
Angry-looking whitecaps looked poised to pounce on the dike at will. They’d take with it sand and tar and road, even cars, or anything else that would dare impede its destination onto the dike.
****
Winter time at Mashnee was otherworldly. On the day we arrived there was just enough dusting of snow to be considered legitimate snowfall, at least by Cape Cod standards. It was also cold enough, with winds whipping in and across the island from the north, to lose feeling in your toes and fingertips, and bring a flood of tears to exposed eyes.
As if a chameleon, the island had traded green summer lawns, manicured flower beds, hearty vegetable gardens, and outdoor barbecues, for the barren, silver sheen, and absolute clarity of winter. The island hadn’t simply changed seasons, from hot to cold, rather it had transformed into a second self, an altered being, very much the same, yet, totally different. And as I quickly noted, its sound bellowed in a slightly different voice, this one somewhat deeper with a serious, almost sober, timbre. A bit melancholy.
The island wasn’t just stagnantly waiting in anticipatory slumber for summer to return; no, it was fighting the infringing elements for its very survival each and every day. Getting slapped and slapping back the best it could at the erosion where it had lost a foothold. Castles fall into the sea, eventually.
With the change of season, came the island’s own special beauty and revelations, as she volunteered many of her secrets in the winter. Not an exposé of her bare underbelly that would still need to be earned, and earned it eventually would be, but a removal of colorful makeup and the lifting of a trailing hem, for a brief but tantalizing glimpse of hidden wonders. She was a private lady (Island’s are girls, right?), this island, giving only a chosen few a hint of what lay beyond, accounting for the vacant parking lots and homes left empty since Labor Day.
Looking around, I loved every bit of the winter wonderland!
Our cottage was a cape-weathered gray with a forest green door and matching shutters. We were on Clipper Road again, but this time on the opposite side of the street. A row of thickets, then the grand ocean sat behind us. The shoreline terrain was a bit rocky and the beach became slightly less friendly as it looked to follow the bend toward Captains Row and the rockiest stretch of landscape on the island, as well as some of the steepest.
Next door of course, were my cousins, residing in a book-end home, theirs with yellow shutters and matching doors, with our winter-crusted yards seamlessly adjoining. The combination scent of leftover ashes still slightly aglow in the fireplace, blasts of chilled ocean air swishing through the exposed screen door, along with the somewhat reassuring smell of knotty-pine paneling, well, everything, was simply intoxicating. The island may have relinquished the vibrant scents of honeysuckle, cherry laurels, and blackberry but more than adequately replaced them with American holly, eastern red cedar, and the sharp, spicy smells of everything that is cold and white and yes, you saw it coming,
100% Mashnee!
Best of all, the rentals included pool passes to Mr. Reginald G. Knight Senior’s private, heated, full-length, barely been used, most-exciting-thing-I’d-ever-seen, indoor pool, complete with whirlpool, sauna, and diving board (Also complete with toxic-smelling, virtually unbreathable, chlorine-saturated air as the pool’s “bubble” enclosure was poorly ventilated, except for the occasional wind flurry from someone opening the front doors.), but hey, who needs to breathe when you’re an almost-eleven-year-old kid in a pool! In fact, breathing, purple lips, shriveled fingers (shrinkage), and water-bloated tummies be damned.
Just get me in that pool!
The week’s vacation was memorable for a myriad of reasons. Seems like so much happened in such a short span of time, enough so that I recall each detail; my sister and cousins “babysitting” me, taking me under their wings, and treating me like a big kid, making me feel so special, learning to swim much longer distances underwater, and diving off the diving board, and clowning too many times until I hit my head and had to be rescued by the cool, long-haired, hippie-looking lifeguard named “Butchy” who’d been blessed with outdoorsy, handsome facial features, of which even John Wayne would have been jealous.
Butchy was probably eighteen years old or so. He wore his long, sandy-colored hair parted down the middle, and he’d often casually toss it back with a flick of his head. Surfer-style long hair was in. Even I had managed to persuade my parents that long hair was in (helped emensely by the Beatles invasion!).
I noticed right away that Butchy was a big wink guy, and he utilized a well-honed and presumably sexy sideways glance to perfection. I might have been only ten, but I definitely knew pro-level flirting when I saw it, and I mentally filed the lessons and the mannerisms away.
In true Mashnee tradition, where age differences and social circumstances meant nothing, Butchy befriended me for the week, endlessly throwing tennis balls for me to catch while simultaneously flirting with the older girls.
But of all the experiences that week, the one which left the biggest mark was my very first encounter with something I had never even heard of before, something called anti-Semitism. Perhaps it was generated by ignorance more than hate, since it wasn’t intended as mean-spirited. At least I don’t think it was. Even now I’m still not sure. But it cut to my quick.
On the third day of vacation, per our little routine, my cousins and Alison took me to the indoor pool, where I met a kid around my age in the sauna. He had light blond hair and very pale skin. He was chubby, but not obese or anything, and he wasn’t very tall. His eyes were a stark blue; I noticed that right off, and he looked overheated. His breathing sounded a bit heavy.
“Hey,” I got up the nerve to say as it was only the two of us plus some older girl in the sauna. This particular sauna was hot enough to sizzle your nose hairs when you inhaled. The steam was fueled by wooden buckets of water poured on blazing-hot rocks, creating steamy blasts of the driest heat imaginable, which simultaneously hurt while feeling good.
“Heya to you,” he said back and sounded funny. “Have y’all been here all week long?” he asked, and again I wasn’t sure I heard every word.
“Yeah, we got here Saturday with my family, and we’re here through the day-after Christmas,” I filled him in. “I’m with my older sister and two cousins, you might have seen them around,” I continued.
“We’s’all just arrahyved here today and this is my first time at the poohl? And all ah know is we’re stayin’ in a blue cottage somewheres ’round here and just unpacked ouhr campuh.”
At least that’s what I thought I heard him say, except his words were drawn out long and differently with different emphasis on different syllables, like I had never heard before, with a weird, but somehow delightfully entertaining twang coloring every word spoken,
“We’re all here from Allah-bayma,” he said. “We drove a purty long way.”
That’s when it occurred to me we hadn’t really introduced ourselves, and as any Mashnee ambassador would do, I reached out my right hand, offering a friendly but firm grasp, while looking him straight in the eye, like my father taught, and replied, “My name is Jimmyrocket; people say it as one word just like that. Anyway, I’m from Seekonk, and I live right next door to a farm just fifty miles from here. I never met anyone from wherever you said, before.”
“Hey, y’all. I’m Travis Tucker,” he said, and with that we shook hands. His hands were noticeably bigger than mine, sweatier too. But I thought his accent was super cool, and he seemed nice enough.
Travis and I hung out at the pool all that day, and I really liked him. After a while I could understand most of what he was saying, enough at least to piece the rest together in reasonably comprehensible fashion. I was a noticeably better swimmer and probably an all-around better athlete than him, but that didn’t seem to matter as we swam and tossed tennis balls and hurled a rubberized football around the pool. We did get the occasional lighthearted “reprimand” from my buddy, Butchy, for breaking the occasional rule (something I had perfected last summer).
Late in the afternoon, I could see Travis having an animated conversation with his mom and dad, both rather burly, and scruffy-looking folks. I eavesdropped a bit, only to hear an undistinguishable array of drawl mixed in with a few now more distinguishable y’all’s. At the end of the conversation Travis clearly smiled, so I figured whatever it was, it was good. He then turned and ran, well ok, jogged, toward me, happily blurting an invitation.
“Y’all wanna come on over for dinner tomorra?” he yelled as he ran. “My momma and pappy said it’s ok.”
“Yeah, sure thing,” I accepted. “I mean I just need to go ask my parents, but I’m sure they’ll say yes,” I suggested, which they did.
That night my family and cousins congregated at their cottage for yet another lobster and steamers fest. It was great. After dinner we toasted multiple bags of campfire marshmallows with green sticks conveniently left behind by previously renters. We alternated between toasting and flat-out burning them to a gooey crisp over the sparking wood flames. I must have eaten at least thirty of ’em, and talk about good, yummm!
The next day I got up early as usual, did a chilly morning run, and on more-or-less of a whim, decided to negotiate the steep, slightly slippery, back stairs of an apparently unoccupied Captains Row residence, in order to reach the ragged shore below. The shoreline was rife with large boulders and jagged rocks with only a vague memory of coarse sand at low tide and nothing but mineralized rock at high tide.
The tide was particularly low from the full moon, and it exposed many of the ocean’s shoreline secrets. The seas beyond were dressed for winter, sporting frothy white caps atop the icy-gray water.
I carefully maneuvered myself pretty far out, climbing up on a large, slightly slick boulder, home to a large family of snails who looked like they were hanging on for dear life.
First, I perched on the uneven surface of the large rock, a position distinctly unkind to my derrière, so I planted my feet as best I could, stood up, and let the chilly air blast into my face and whip back my dark, thick, shoulder-length hair.
Ahhhhhhhh, now it was just ME, THE OCEAN, and (I was starting to think of it as) MY ISLAND, just the way I liked it. Looking around the expanse, I spotted a series of large, concave-shaped rocks leaning almost symmetrically against each other. It was obvious that the massive array of boulders were some that were normally submerged, with only their crests, peeking through. It looked pretty cool, but what drew me to explore further, was a small, cave-like opening leading into a rock-bordered cocoon of sorts, extending back perhaps six to eight feet.
With the cold air now biting at my ears and unable to feel the tips of my fingers despite lightweight running gloves, I decided to leave further exploration for a warmer day, perhaps in the summer, if I was back.
