I did finally leave the island, sledding my suitcases down to the landing, handling the sled's painter like a dog leash at the Westminster Kennel Club dog show: "No, no heel! Not nip my heels! Heel!" I got a good early start, so no one was witness to the first part of the trip, when I was still struggling to balance two large suitcases on a plastic sled meant for a grade-schooler. There was even time to grab my mail, which I had not checked in two weeks. Getting on the boat, I thought I had dodged the bullet of riding the same boat as the Dark and his dad. He and I had said our goodbyes the night before, and I did not really care to spend forty minutes pretending to be mere acquaintances.
Of course they were taking the morning boat. They were just the last to arrive.
And I spent forty minutes pretending to be an acquaintance, while he buried his shapely head in a National Geographic. God love me, I had brought the collected poems of Emily Dickenson- for a measure of solace. Books become talk on the mailboat, and soon it was "Oh, whatcha reading?" and "Emily Dickenson? Why Emily Dickenson?" I couldn't bust out with "I am preparing my soul for the descent back into passionate, yet asexual spinsterhood," so I settled for "Taking a chance over vacation to get my New England Studies back on... thinking about my thesis..."
I am fairly certain his environmental science major did not include the study of Emily Dickenson, so I daresay the Dark, overhearing, did not jump to the conclusion "damn, she is going to miss me." Unless poetry is now so seldom read that one assumes the reader must be tending to a raw heart. Next time I should brown bag the cover or stick to Robert Frost. Ugh.
That was only the second stage of the journey (yes, I will count the sledding as the first). Next I had to drive the beloved, yet unregistered, uninspected Jeep some fifty miles to the family homestead while not being caught by the authorities or busting the slack rear wheel. It was tense, but I made it.
I settled into the guest room, where my mother and aunt had erected my late grandmother's fake Christmas tree: I didn't have a tree on the island, and they felt I had earned one. In the afternoon we left to go visit my surviving grandmother, who has now been in an assisted living facility for a year. Our departure was only slightly delayed when I took my time putting on my boots, finishing up my Sanka, etc... Uncle Charlie seemed to be in no rush, so I saw no reason for me to do so. Turns out everyone else was in the van waiting, and Charlie wasn't going on the trip at all. Sometimes I suffer from a false sense of complacency.
Happily, nothing will jar you from your complacency like a visit to an assisted living home. I may be on the verge of thirty, but my grandmother is verging on ninety. She has been a lot happier since moving to the home: she dances, she plays Beano, she flirts with one of the male workers, and now includes "young men" on the list of things she wants us to put in her casket. They rate right up there with her cane and "cross words." Last year, as my mother and aunt were agonizing over the decision to farm her out, I told them it would be like old-age boarding school. I mean hell, the greatest increase in STDs is in the geriatric set. It is nice to see her happy; to see her outside the context of the family household, where despite everyone's best intentions, she became the burden she never wanted to be.
And it is also wholly depressing, as proof that if I do live a nice long life, this too too solid flesh will sag and fail... eventually to resolve itself into ash and steam, if not dew. I have spent the last month haranguing and corraling children, rambling all over the island alone and in company, pressing my lips to equally vital lips- how could I not be aware that I am approaching my prime? That I am well into it? Just as my grandmother had her prime, skating with young men, casting sideways glances while making a quip... every so often shades from her youth flash across her face, a face not unlike my own.
Today she once again used an expression we hadn't heard in a while, upon unwrapping some Christmas gifts: "Boy oh boy, aren't I glad I didn't die last night!" Once in a while, I have moments, generally outside during a walk, when I think "I could go now, and be okay with it- no regrets..." In those moments I feel saturated in the beauty of this life- but of course when I return to my laundry, the prospect of compost and cat litter, or think about something I don't have (hello masculine companionship!), the joie de vivre slowly drains out, leaving me less obviously soppy. Which is just as well. Because while it was wonderful, boy oh boy, aren't I glad I didn't die last night!
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