I was chatting with ferry captain Liz on a recent trip to town (we chat quickly, but still rarely finish our topic before the chain goes down) about who we are, or more accurately who people think we are: Witness Protection clients. Why else, folks wonder, would we choose to isolate ourselves on Chappy when we could do so almost equally as well in Edgartown?
Chappy decided that we really didn’t need our storm door after all, so she enlisted the help of the wind and had it ripped completely off its hinges. A lot easier to get in and out of the house with groceries now.
Grass waits for no man. Typically by this time of year, I have the Cheetos bag open and am in full recline in my comfortable chair. But there is nothing typical about life on Chappy. The temperatures are now approaching the 70s, and all sorts of flora are making their comebacks, chief amongst them the grasses.
Most weeks when I sit down to write this column, I make an honest attempt to include insights and observations outside the confines of my own small world. And most weeks I fail.
My Auntie Babs, Barbara Fynbo, passed recently. She was 93. The youngest child of my great-grandfather Frank Marshall, she never seemed young to me — probably because I entered into her life rather late in the game. But she also never seemed old to me. Babs was not an old lady, even in her nineties. Auntie Babs was a doer — she was always doing something: sewing curtains, fixing a grass mat rug, making a jumpsuit for Uncle Bob, crafting a wooden sleigh.
Seems to me like summer is already winding down. Odd, with a full half of August still to be used up. But August always has been the strangest month for me on the Island. I compare this month to a four-course meal in which the entree is hurried to the table, gobbled up with vigor, and then everything that comes after is only vaguely considered on the periphery of one’s overstuffed self.
I’ve been dreaming a lot lately — mostly clouded scenarios of chores unfinished, but peppered amongst the drudgery of my dreamscape have been a few gems. One such jewel was my dream of a Chappy populated by canals.
I knew a girl named July. She was 12. I was 10. She wore paisley bell bottoms. She had chain link bracelets. Her eyes hinted at some events that I had yet to witness. She rode motorbikes. She was so cool. This July, our July, is nothing like her. Chill out seventh month!
There haven’t been many rainy days on Chappy this summer. Some sprinkles, but frugally distributed like a greedy ice cream vendor. I suspect most are okay with this paltry precipitation, and I like the sunshine as much as the next guy, but I need my rainy days. Firstly, my grass children tend to thrive when their home is wet, and I love my green kids, so I am happy when they’re happy. Secondly, and moreover, I need the excuse to go dark, to hunker down with a book — held captive by the forbidding closeness of nature.
