Susan Greco is an Atlanta native, married, and a mother to two sons. Susan's blog, Hindsight, is about life’s choices and our connections with one another. She loves cooking for friends, traveling, growing flowers and tomatoes, and considers it a great day if she’s laughed out loud, had a really good cup of coffee, or made time to go for a run. High energy, high hopes, and vivid details fill her up, and she adores playing around with words to capture moments and experiences she wants to share.
There’s been an old sink in an outbuilding on this property for years, and my cursory research suggests it dates to the 1880s. It’s a wide marble sink with a circle bowl, and the stone and metal faucets are worn. The marble has that yummy dull patina marble gets over time. Veiny and milky grey, and its honed matte finish and etchings tell generations of stories. This old house predates plumbing, so I can only imagine what a luxury a sink must have been with hot and cold water running out of separate faucets–like little magical rivers!
The marble has several rust spots and after trying several rust cleaners, I found it’s even better to create a DIY mixture called a poultice from hydrogen peroxide and baking soda, with enough water to give it the consistency of peanut butter. You apply it only to the rust-colored area and seal it with plastic wrap you’ve taped down. Leave it at least 72 hours and then clean it off and wipe it vigorously with a soft cloth. This worked for me, and the rust seemed to fade slightly. If you are super careful, you can also lightly run sandpaper over it which will eat into the rust layer and lighten it further. It also can scratch the marble, however, so you must take great care to not etch it further. At some point, you realize a slight amount of rust is okay since you’ve been at this for weeks, making various potions and poultices, and perhaps it’s time to move on to the next challenge before you: the faucets.
Cold faucet on left where hot should be–maybe a brain boost?
The faucets looked dullish green and oxidized, and they weren’t responding to various methods I’d used to clean them. After more research I learned the green corrosion isn’t necessarily a bad thing and found this explanation:
Although it makes sense to think of the green patina on the exterior of the bronze as a disease or a flaw, it’s a corrosion that protects the material inside. The greenish corrosive layer that coats the surface of a bronze faucet after repeated exposure to air and moisture is a protective shell that prevents the metal alloy from sustaining further damage and rotting or becoming porous. The coating can be seen as a good thing, indicative of this material’s ability to withstand temperature fluctuations and dampness.
Too perfect to carve
Still, I wanted to get under the charming patina and see what came before. Wandering the hardware store yesterday I came upon a product called Brasso, which is designed for cleaning and polishing seven different metals, including bronze. I found a reputable marble cleaner as well, and maybe the most perfect pumpkin I’ve ever seen (and at 30% off!). I felt as if I’d scored big and came away with a renewed energy to roll up my sleeves and get to work, now with a satisfying pride that only comes with commitment and tenacity–and hopefully the right products.
Samantha has plans
The cat has her own project and is certain she can climb into the kitchen ceiling and maybe even on into the outdoors. For now I’ve nailed up an old sheet, but she remains terribly entertained at the possibilities and the new windows on the world she can now look through.
For my project, I had to liberally tape off these faucets so the surrounding marble wouldn’t be further traumatized by chemicals, and then I set to work. I started with a microfiber cloth and alternated between that and paper towels. After some effort, I saw a little green come off on the towel, but not enough to convince me it was working. I kept at it though because where there’s a little green, surely there is more. For the better part of an hour, I applied copious amounts of Brasso to my cloth and rubbed. And rubbed. And rubbed some more. I began to see light, hope and the loveliest shiny metal coming out. A number of distracting dark specks wouldn’t lift, so I employed my sandpaper trick I’d used on the rust, and they faded into the metal. What I’m left with is gracious and stunning and shiny. I think it must be bronze, but it resembles copper. Shiny like a penny.
Hot “Before”Hot “After”
How long have these faucets been waiting in the wings for their rebirth? If this house could talk! All along, the green corrosion coating has been protecting them, saving their luster and shine from the elements until someone is curious enough to lure it out of hiding.
I can’t help but think of our own coatings and hardened shells we wear to protect us from the hardness of the world, yet how much beauty there is within all of us and always has been.
Hey, it’s me again. I know the world is terribly troubled and noisy and you’ve a mile long list of things to do. But like other cancer clubbers I feel as if October, Cancer Awareness Month, has once again given me the green light to take off the breaks and plow forth with this pink awareness evangelism I’m about to spew. I remember these women before my diagnosis when I was blissfully ignorant. They were everywhere. On tv, on posters at bus stops, doctors’ offices, marching in the streets. They all seemed to have this smile I found incongruous with the cause that had them marching in the first place. Lock eyes with one of them and she might see right through you and know you haven’t scheduled that mammogram, have you?
This blissful ignorance of which I refer were those years when I sauntered into the doctor and got the mammogram and went about life unencumbered, and the letter always showed up in my mailbox with the nothing to see here box checked. There was that one time when there was a call back but it turned out to be nothing. I always landed on my feet. Until I didn’t.
I recall during many a mammogram the tech often would remark about what dense breasts I had. She always seemed surprised at what my tissue presented on screen and there was almost this Little Red Riding Hood delivery with a, “My what DENSE TISSUE you have!” What’s a patient to do with that remark? Turns out, there is plenty you can do, beginning with talking to your doctor. These days much more is known about dense breast tissue. Doctors know dense breast tissue makes breast cancer screening more difficult and it increases the risk of breast cancer.
So back to my agenda. We can all agree that mammograms don’t rise to the top of our list. We are busy, many of us with jobs and kids and partners and pets, all vying for our attention. Signing up to be flattened on a cold metal machine just doesn’t seem all that important. We are young and we are healthy, and it doesn’t run in our family, so we will do it when we do it. Also, we are scared. What if they find something?
Wait just one minute!
We think we can wait until our schedule opens up, until it dawns on us again, or when our doctor pesters us again next year to make the appointment. But you know what doesn’t wait? Cancer. Yep, that’s right. It likes to stay busy. It’s predictable that way.
Those of us who’ve had teenagers in the house know what can happen. Parents schedule a night out or a short weekend away and then what? Suddenly there’s a party at your house, and not one you planned. The guest list keeps growing and things can easily get out of control.
With mammograms and self-exams we can take the reins and ensure no party gets planned or if one does, we can throw ammo at it and create an undesirable environment should any visitors dare show up again.
So let’s shut down a party before it even begins. Get it done. Get that mammogram and do your own self-exam. It’s a good habit to start and you can stay on top of things. One less thing to worry about.
I’ve been visited by these partyers and I’d rather you not be. There is lots of clean up, lots of expense, worry, and none of it feels good. So let’s not get this party started at all. It’s your body, your house, and you can reinforce those locks and make a party at your place too difficult to bother with.
It can be scary, I know, but do it anyway. Schedule it, feel yourself, and put it behind you, until the next month or year when it’s time to do it again. Make it routine. You don’t have to join a march or answer to anyone, like me, who may be bugging you about your breast health. But your body is counting on you to watch out for it, and I believe you can and should.
They say less is more. That feeling of shedding things which no longer work for you, are broken, or are duplicates. These items are dead weight and likely never did spark joy, and they certainly don’t now. Pluck them from their spot on a table and magically the air flows freer. And your mind follows suit.
Just how many tchotchkes must a person amass in a lifetime? Is it to fill a blank tabletop, like a voice fills a silence, or maybe certain objects tug at one’s heartstrings scoring an invitation to live their lives out in our homes? Or could it be there’s a sale and getting a deal clouds our decision making?
This issue with stuff is not mine alone. It’s all of ours, and the people we share spaces with bring their baggage to the table, some acquiring more bags when already there are plenty, and some rarely pronouncing a bag primed for dismissal when it’s clearly time. Once added to the fold, these belongings sit, occasionally getting dusted and moved around, but mostly, they block the flow and if large enough, the view too.
One bizarre knickknack appeared months ago in my friend Connie’s beach condo which she and her husband co-own with another person. It’s one of dozens of things that have ended up in the place over the years, a growing collection of stuff the other owner can’t resist, many such items in disrepair and no longer useable. There are even notes he’s posted instructing that all condiments (outdated or not) stay put, despite them cluttering refrigerator shelves and leaving a shabby impression for incoming renters.
It’s become clear to Connie that the revolving door letting things in must be malfunctioning because once inside, the way out is blocked. It’s one thing to hang on to the occasional appliance that no longer works, tucking it away in a cabinet in hopes someone will get around to fixing it. It’s another to stow four of them–blenders in this case–each with various essential parts missing, and none adding up to a whole, especially when a perfectly fine blender sits on the bar in plain view ready for use. It begs the question, why haven’t these items yet been escorted into recycling heaven? To their credit, the orphaned blender components are at least hidden behind a lower cabinet door, but that was not the case for one such gaudy item the other owner, on a visit down, left front and center on a living room table.
Not typically a complainer, Connie, however, several times pointed out this silver sparkly mass to us as if to make sure we realized its addition to the décor wasn’t her doing, but also to communicate her disdain for its existence, which she found brutally detracting from her sacred happy place–and perhaps her guests’ too. Having too much stuff can even be dangerous as Connie found out. She nearly cut herself because a broken glass platter had been shoved between two pillows on the top shelf in the Owner’s closet and she’d placed her hand directly on the cut piece when she went to pull it out.
We all see things differently, but the litmus test seems to be if you move or remove an item and it is never again noticed or needed, as has been the case for several things that found their way into the condo before and have fallen apart and been removed since, perhaps it belongs with someone else, somewhere else, including the trash, particularly if it sparks not joy but despair. That at least was our thinking.
On further inspection it became clear that this object, whose bizarre form took inspiration from sea coral and organ pipes and appeared liberally cloaked in Reynold’s Wrap, was mass produced, and by all accounts, just plain ugly. It didn’t require an intervention to convince Connie it needed to go, but since she didn’t bring it into the space, it technically wasn’t hers—same for the broken blenders and strange and useless knickknacks—so there was naturally a hesitancy to act. Although we were merely guests, after a few trips to this pretty beachfront condo we’d become equally invested in protecting the calm this place brought. After enough banter about the thing over the course of several days and in the spirit of friends helping friends lighten their load, the four of us developed a plan.
We couldn’t just trash it although it would certainly be a convenient route to take, but that would be wasteful as well as deliberately inconsiderate. Instead, regifting it was its way out and ours too. But who or where would be the deserving recipient? Adjacent to the condo is the Flora-Bama, a mainstay of the area which opened in 1964, and describes itself as a down-home waterfront bar/grill which offers oysters, pub grub & live music every day. So close is the Flora-Bama to the state line that you can step four inches out of its west door in Florida and find yourself in Alabama. It has a gritty vibe, welcoming bikers and beach babes alike, and offers that certain je ne sais quoi unique to dark Floridian watering holes.
Celebrated musicians have played there including Kenny Chesney as well as the late Jimmy Buffet, who once dropped by to sit in with the house band and tore up the place with his music, triggering a noticeable growth in the lounge’s hanging underwear. Also famous are the Flora-Bama’s Bushwackers, a frozen alcoholic drink made with Kahlua, rum, creme de cacao, and cream of coconut, which was first invented in 1975 in St. Thomas, USVI, but has since become popular in Florida.
On our visits down to Connie’s, we’ve always enjoying taking in the Flora-Bama, either walking to it from the beach for a Bushwacker, or for a $5 cover charge experiencing an evening there of live music and people watching, and of course another Bushwacker made extra special with a light rum floater on top. It was a no brainer that this item belonged there, but how would we do it? They card you at the door, rifle through your bags for rifles and other such crazy things some folks consider toting and thankfully and thoughtfully they screen your entry. But would the silvery blob make it through Flora-Bama security? Could it be that we were meeting a friend for her birthday and bringing this along as her gift? A little tissue paper and a gift bag and voila, the gift and celebration were born!
Connie joked with the security man at the door, who looked through her purse and peered into the bag, that she hoped the gift didn’t look like a brain. “Indeed it does,” he remarked with a smirk, but nonetheless with our wrists now stamped we were ushered in, the giftbag too. The place is dark inside with different levels of bars and stages and has the whimsy and noise of Atlanta’s now closed Masquerade, but offers its own unique clientele and folksy Floridian grit.
We found a corner table in a small bar where a trio sang country folk covers. Our server immediately noticed the gift bag, its bulbous silveriness peering through the tissue, which we would later unveil at our pretend gifting celebration. Unwrapped, it gleamed in this dark bar and when the server returned, it was clear an explanation was in order. “It’s her birthday!” we chimed in, pointing not to a single woman, but wildly unpracticed, pointing to each other and, laughing hysterically, clearly unable to correctly identify the birthday girl. The four of us smiled like a Cheshire cat, each with a mouse tail dangling from its mouth.
Not sure if she coveted it for her own coffee table or else couldn’t believe someone’s extraordinarily awful taste, but she fixated on it each time with a frightened uneasiness as if it might move, as she looped back periodically to check on us. We felt an unspoken lightness come over us with this silvery creation now out of the condo, out of the bag, and out into the night to acclimate to its new environs. In the distance, bras hung from rafters and coat hooks or from any old place you could get a bra to hang, and on each were messages written in Sharpie ink. It’s unclear exactly how or when this tradition started, but the sheer volume of bras was impressive. These foundations aren’t just bar art, and I’ve since read that “bra slinging” fundraiser events at the Flora-Bama have raised money for groups supporting breast cancer research and other causes. Curious, I wanted in.
It had been several months that I’d been on a hunt for a comfortable strapless bra that would fit and appear effortless, a tall order, like the bra itself, which I still hadn’t filled. The one I wore this evening, the only one I owned, was over a decade old, and I didn’t much like it. To its credit it was a likable neutral nude color, and it usually didn’t show, even under my barest halter tops. However, its underwire cut into my ribs every damn time leaving my skin with grooved indentions, and the padded cups were ill fitting and gapped and formed indentions in their center.
Like all alcohol, the Bushwackers were a diuretic, so I made my way past the bar and the band to the ladies’ room. Inside the stall I pulled off the whalebone undergarment and placed it rolled up inside the pocket of my dress. Returning toward our table and passing the bar, I asked to borrow a Sharpie, but they suggested I could purchase one in their gift store downstairs. With the cover charge and two Bushwackers I’d already invested, I had little interest in purchasing a pen. Besides, I had a ballpoint in my purse and a bra in my pocket, so I was all set for this little craft project.
As if huddled for a yearbook signing, we girls took turns with the bra, passing it and the pen around, covering our work from each other and our server as we scribbled silliness across the cups and strap. Elsie got first dibs and assigned the cups an asymmetry, scrawling “B” on one and “C” on the other. I gave the garment a succinct biting parting shot with “Fuck” on one cup, “U” on the center strip, and “Cancer” on the other cup, and softened the harshness with an “xoxo Susan” before passing it to the next girl who thoughtfully scrawled her own message. When we were satisfied with our work, I modeled our creation, and a clicking of IPhones captured the moment before we fastened it around the sculpture—a perfect fit!
Once we’d settled our bill and were walking toward the door, our server stopped me and motioned to our table. “You left your sculpture,” she noted, to which I remarked, “It’s okay. I’m good.” There was nothing left to say, and I walked off risking the urge to turn around and take in her expression. I hope on my next trip down I will find this strapless wonder proudly hanging among the others, and I hope the sculpture sparks joy for whomever decides to adopt it, the Flora-Bama or otherwise.
I know Ifeel lighter, and I imagine Connie does too. And for you ladies listening, I want you to feel lighter too not only this month, October, which is Breast Cancer Awareness month, but each month going forward. So take off your bras and check your breasts because cancer lurks in one out of seven of us, whether you live in Flora, Bama, or anywhere else. If you can feel it, you can find it, and that means you can fight it. Knowledge is power. Take yours. Love you.
On Friday I was on a plane heading home and deciding how to fill the time when I noticed a Brittany Spaniel service dog, Bella, in the row ahead of me. Her owner told me they were returning home to Atlanta after months of being away, and it was clear Bella was a seasoned traveller. As we all got settled in, I decided to watch The Whale, which I found in the critically acclaimed films category Delta offers. The main character, Charlie, gives up on himself and ends up obese and alone, and the film is shot entirely from his apartment with a handful of characters coming and going. The movie has received its share of criticism—narrowly depicting the grossness of obesity, unlikable characters, and so on—but I find this single room filmmaking interesting much like I found My Dinner with Andre. The two movies couldn’t be more different, but this cinematic style works when you’ve got a smart script and exceptional performers in the room.
There were stories within this story, and I was taken aback by its triggering effect, and after the credits scrolled off the screen, I was left choked up and teary. What was it? Isolation, loneliness, being different, tasting love and then losing it, the memories that haunt us from sweeter times, or estrangement and painful family relationships? It then dawned on me that seeing Charlie’s struggle to breathe and with tubes in his nose flooded me back to my mother’s battle with emphysema. At the end, she was on oxygen 24/7, and I still wince seeing photos from those days with her breathing paraphernalia so in focus. Most days she sat on her couch at an angle with her elbows resting on her knees to take in what precious little air she could. Her medication left her a swollen blown-up version of herself, and her long, beautiful legs developed permanent elbow-sized divots above each knee. I always thought things would get better despite her deteriorating health unfolding before me.
It was in December a month before she died that I took her to the Fox Theater to see the Nutcracker. Her breathing was now regularly labored, but I thought a little Christmas cheer might bounce her out of this slump, or at least table it for a few hours. She looked festive when I picked her up and we made our way south down Peachtree Street. As I pushed her wheelchair down the theater’s incline, groups of people making their way to their own seats parted ways, opening our path. Here, my mom appeared less like my mom and more like some hunched over woman on oxygen I’d begun wheeling into the theater. She graciously smiled away this worst kind of attention, occasionally interjecting that she can walk but this is more convenient, which wasn’t a lie.
It seemed as if the incline’s momentum grew exponentially, and my slight frame strained to grip the resolute runaway wheelchair. I never wanted her to see me struggle on her account, so I locked eyes with an usher who kindly stepped in to get us to our spot and the chair into park. I was enormously proud of our efforts to even be here and for our festive girls’ night out, but my mother’s self-consciousness was real. Perhaps sitting higher up in the aisle separate from those in the rows below, each unaware of their glorious bottomless breath, she thought about earlier times here with her husband on her arm at Christmastime. Here now did not align with where she imagined she’d ever be, yet for me she’d always be the creative, spirited woman who squeezed the most out of each day, all the while talking up a storm but with breath to spare.
The Nutcracker performance was predictably good, but I was distracted, forcing a smile when she’d look my way, and focusing on the logistics we faced leaving the theater. I noticed there were side exits, and after the show we negotiated our way outside where an attendant stayed with her while I got the car. Among other things, her illness brought incontinence, and these hours with no bathroom break left the car seat underneath her damp. I doubt she even knew, and I didn’t dare mention it, and honestly, to hell with the seats in this convertible I bought with my inheritance from my father’s passing. In a matter of weeks she would become the second parent I’d lose in a span of two years when I was all of 31.
The film’s central character confined to his home with his best years behind him, brought memories of my mom’s last years living in her apartment. Her decorating flair accompanied her everywhere she went, in health and in sickness, and though the apartment complex seemed a bit dowdy to me, she made her space warm and elegant like she did all her homes. It was the right price and in the perfect location, but there was one detail she decided to overlook. The lease stipulated no pets, yet her gorgeous orange tabby, Izzy (short for Isadore), was coming with. Full stop. The work around proved more work keeping Izzy away from the windows and sequestering him when management occasionally knocked, and in time, Izzy grew bored and craved an outside view. And so my mom began to give him one. Eventually either it was a resident who snitched or an apartment staffer who discovered him, but in any event, Izzy had to go. Amid her declining health, witnessing my mother’s lonely longing for Izzy and defeated tears brought me to my knees.
At the end of our lives what is it we most want? Is it to know we were loved, made a difference, felt supported by our body which remained strong, or is it possibly simpler? Maybe it’s nothing more than to have a creature to love and live with and hold close. The Whale dove into deep waters of sadness and longing and life’s meaning and cravings, but it also hovered near sunnier themes of strength, connection, and triumph.
I had simply wanted to while away a few hours and get lost in a movie, but I got much more. With perfect timing and a nose for just what I needed, Bella came by twice for kisses. And then we touched down.
I was in it for the little visits in the front room, rocking in the chairs on the porch, swirling my spoon in a bowl of local clam chowder and noticing how fresh clams aren’t uniformly shaped like the canned ones I use. Each turn of the spoon churned up bits of skin pulled away from potato—or is that a clam or bit of bacon?— all of it luscious, velvety goodness.
I envisioned cool mornings at the kitchen table with a pot of coffee on and banter about how we slept, plans for the day, or nothing at all, which was everything. I had hoped to get a lobster roll, the warm kind on a crispy buttered bun, full of meat drizzled with butter. The days didn’t disappoint.
I didn’t expect someone would bring a frisbee and there would be the ideal side yard for tossing it. Or how much I’d delight in my son’s familiar energy—which always reminds me of my own—and repeated invitations to throw it, and how wonderful it would feel to toss a frisbee together in a quaint little side yard of a weathered shingle cottage in a coastal Massachusetts town.
The calm of a tiny airport
I didn’t expect the layers this big life brings to peel away so quickly and usher in a simplicity I’ve been craving, one I think I must have given up on, or relegated as being from a time long ago. It’s not the lobster roll that I will most remember and crave again, but the little moments that added up. I allowed myself to wander more and move in the direction of things I enjoy. I was back to being that little girl who loves walking ahead in an airport to the luggage conveyor belt to see if she can be the first to spot everyone’s bags.
The one who would have the chance to follow a sign for fresh eggs, walking on foot one afternoon and meeting the egg purveyor himself, who presented a dozen eggs collected that morning, plus a tour of his backyard, refurbished coop, outdoor shower, and deck. People take pride in their homes. As well they should. That person who is filled up by farm stands, as if seeing them for the first time, bursting with gorgeous vegetables neatly stacked, homemade pies, breads, and flowers scattered around. But wait, do those heirloom tomatoes have a grown in Canada sticker on them? No matter, their beauty travels and looks and tastes divine here, and besides, I’m all in.
Wedding cake, Vineyard styleBeetlebung FarmBeetlebung Farm farm standBeautiful seafood to take home to cookPickets, window boxes, and a view
Getting away demands that the noise of the city and the rooms in your house and in your head, the ones that yank your attention this way and that, take a break and make space for whatever pops up or nothing at all. This place and its cool temps were ripe for coffee in a warm robe and fuzzy socks. Always pack your robe.
I didn’t expect the intermittent toothache I brought with me some 918 miles as the crow flies to ramp up and bring a suffering so intense that my memories of natural childbirth would seem like the cake walk it most assuredly wasn’t. Warm coffee and chowder consistently set the tooth off, awakening it from the many-Advil-a-day slumber I’d worked so hard to achieve. I was left instinctively cupping my right cheek, as if turning my palm into some form of dental brassiere would cradle the pulsing tooth and lessen the pain. It did zero. Weeks earlier, I’d seen both an endodontist and ENT, and neither could definitively diagnose me with a sinus or tooth problem, but the ENT at least sent me off with an Augmentin script in case of infection.
On the plane, the tooth reared its ugly head, leaving me in a puddle of tears, a real spectacle. There is no crying in airplanes, but the pain had nowhere to go except out my eyes, and so I let it. A flight attendant and woman in the row in front of me offered mothering eyes which said, oh how I wish I could help you, you poor dear, but they had to ride it out just like I did. I didn’t want them to also carry this slice of hell and assured them the Advil should kick in soon.
Weathered and wonderful
The front door of the weathered shingle cottage opened into the living room, and a screened door brought in early June breezes and sounds of people walking by and cars passing. The adjacent sitting room had a small TV mounted up high in the corner (fortunately perched bottom of mind as we have visiting to do, not shows to watch) and a space heater we could wheel between these rooms. The yard was simple—a few chairs and a table, fire pit, outdoor shower, and picnic table. The bird bath was popular and we were delighted it had occurred to someone to fill it. If this long joyful bath time was any indication, Martha’s Vineyard birds might be better bathers.
Brodie
A few blocks from our cottage was The Crossroads Gallery. Owned by Michael Blanchard, former CEO-turned addict-turned photographer-and writer, the gallery displays Blanchard’s stunning photos he’s taken around Martha’s Vineyard and sells copies of the two books he’s written. We were greeted by resident labradoodle Brodie and soon after, around the corner appeared Michael. The space was welcoming and warm like Michael’s smile. With his dog Brodie and cat Rocket Man, Michael now calls the Vineyard home, but life hasn’t always been this storybook existence. Michael’s past struggles with addiction took a toll on his work, family, and livelihood, and he doesn’t mind talking about it. We talked about how life brings many of us challenges that change us but connect us with one another too. Talking with Michael was like chatting with a good friend, and he exuded a comfortable familiarity free of judgement or fear. I talked of my own health challenges and another person mentioned a difficult time they’d also experienced. Also, we loved his photos and bought three.
Michael and me
His book, Through A Sober Lens, artfully captures scenes and insights from his experiences, and three quotes in particular spoke to me:
“A shared human experience may be the only point.”
(Amen and what I am increasingly finding feeds me the most.)
On speaking of his addiction, “The only way to stop is to starve it.”
(Think of all the ills we feed knowingly or not, and how putting the brakes on their fuel is how we not only survive but thrive.)
“Above all else, don’t die with your music still in you.”
(Please, no! This may be the greatest injustice any of us could face.)
Over the course of our five days, we saw sailboats and ferries, rabbits and wild turkeys, and of course, plenty of The Black Dog swag. The cliffs and beaches and lighthouses and window boxes and pickets and farms were bursting with charm, and my ailing tooth danced in and out of pain through all of it. I never knew what it would bring—sometimes the heartbeat and heavy pulsing ache, and other times it was as if someone with a serrated knife had made little slits all around the tooth’s gumline and squirted lemon juice (or was that battery acid?) in the cuts. At times, both things happened at once, and then my hand rose to cup my cheek and I went radio silent. My silence a rarity, it became clear when I was mid-flareup, so people knew to just leave me alone.
A few more bowls of chowder later and I was back on a Delta flight. “Ladies and gentleman we’ll be saying goodbye to you at echo 31. E as in echo.” Nothing to watch on TV, but I’d brought books, two I’d been trying to finish for months. It was dark in the cabin, so I lifted my window shade to find an explosion of color stretched out before me on the horizon. It was a show I’d nearly missed, like one of those beach sunrises you give up on and walk away from, but when you turn around to look just in case, you are stunned in the best of ways. So much is not reliable, but nature? She just goes right on doing her thing.
Morning Glory Farms bouquet
Maybe I should have brought home some big takeaways, but instead I’ve got little ones:
Getting it done
Find some stillness. Listen for the quiet. Go to more farmstands and eat a huge salad every day. Take lots of pictures and buy some photos from a small gallery owner if you can. Keep calling your doctor if they don’t call you back, and if your tooth feels as I’ve described, schedule yourself some relief. The root canal happened the day after I got back, and the pain is now gone.
One last takeaway: if you find yourself at dinner overlooking the water, look up because something spectacular might be sailing by. Happy 4th !
