I have never belonged on the Vineyard, yet it’s the place that’s home to my heart. I’ve never been registered to vote here, given birth, or owned property. As a little girl, I can remember peering beneath the hedge at the home of Sen. Edward Brooke, hoping for a glimpse of his daughter’s wedding reception. For almost 60 years I’ve been on the outside looking in. An Island wannabe.
On the cusp of my 60th year on the Island where I wasn’t born, it seems I’ve finally found my place. I have a role to play here, perhaps even more than one.
For the past three years, I have been the judge for the Martha’s Vineyard Wind Festival. Someone asked, “What are your qualifications?” That’s the beauty of it; my main qualification is that I don’t belong. I am an outsider who can help Holly Alaimo bestow gifts donated from local businesses.
Since I don’t live here year round, and am further insulated by the cottage community in the Camp Ground, I don’t know everyone the way Holly does. I slip off the ferry while the daffodils are blooming and leave before the lilacs. I return at the start of hurricane season and I’m gone by just after Columbus Day. Unlike in childhood and as a parent, I’m no longer racing against the deadline on fair entries, usually on the same day as the Grand Illumination. I join others to honk horns for the last sailing of the Island Queen in October and am long gone before the water needs to be turned off.
This year my nonstop flight from Seattle to Boston was due to coincide with Hurricane Dorian’s closest point to the Island. My timing for judging looked dubious. Surely Holly Alaimo and the many supporters of the wind festival had someone more qualified, and available, than me. I wrote Holly that if my flight landed on time and I got the Peter Pan bus to Woods Hole and the ferries were running, that I could be at Oak Bluffs Steamship dock by 12:45 p.m. She replied: “Come straight to the park.”
With those words, I felt like I could float across the country on the jetstream. I was wanted. I was needed. My outsider status had given me a role. Almost as satisfying as achieving my dream of becoming a Hilliard’s Girl. Not belonging was my qualification.
When I think of the place where I have always been happiest, felt the best in my own skin, it has always been here on the Vineyard — whether waking up to a thunderstorm cracking in the night or looking up at the stars from our outdoor shower. But even as I’ve read my maiden name on a brick by the bandstand or sat on my late husband’s bench in Ocean Park, I’ve never felt I belonged. Looking up at the diamonds and the deltas, I realized that’s perfectly fine. What matters is that I am myself here. That hearing the resurrected steam whistle of the Nobska lowing its way across the Sound on a foggy Vineyard morning is like a muscle in my heart.
Those tropical winds were both for and against the wind festival this year. They were too strong and the chance of rain too great to hold the festival on Saturday. The Sunday rain date allowed me to land, bus, ferry and dock in Vineyard Haven the day before. The delay allowed me to watch dancing in the street for the September Art Walk and unpack before Ocean Park on Sunday. There I dispensed Flying Horse tickets (the Ben & Bill’s Ice Cream coupons already gone) and visited with all the kite flyers.
I met Archie Stewart, who will be turning over the kite (making) strings next year. I talked to Richie who travels here for the event and helps me to determine who “really knows what they’re doing.” Smallest, largest, most creative . . . a wind sculpture tribute to a beloved dog, a little boy who waits for this day all year, the visiting family who happened on the festival and bought one kite, then a second. The awards don’t always fit the original categories, although perseverance always matters. There was live music from the bandstand, the proceeds of T-shirt and poster sales were designated for the Animal Shelter of Martha’s Vineyard.
A boy’s kite caught so much wind that it became its falcon shape and took off for Nantucket. He hid his tears behind his father’s back.
Some kites stayed steady in the air, others dive-bombed or tangled, swooped and dipped. But mostly they stayed airborne, like my heart, knowing when it comes to my love of place I have always belonged.
Peggy Sturdivant is a freelance writer living in Seattle.
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