Hrumphing and Traveling Again: This Time to Nantucket

Chapter One

Hrumph again, I’m traveling. Last time Marietta had the meltdown before we left. This time I did. We are going to Nantucket, the place where legends are made. Ship captains, whales, sailboats, 75º high summer temperatures, and the destination of our first successful romantic trip sixteen years ago.

And there is the rub. That trip was made by a thirty nine year old man and woman. We were becalmed in a sailboat there, a once every ten year experience for unfortunate sailors we were told, two newly minted lovers not caring where they were, just glad to be together. We walked together on a golf course while I drove golf balls into the fog and we magically walked into the fog to find them together. Marietta achieved her goal of getting me pie-eyed drunk, me a person who rarely has wine or beer with dinner. We rode bicycles all over town and walked along empty beaches together. When we were becalmed in the sailboat, we waited for rescue for an hour and had to be towed in. But that didn’t matter to us then because we were together. It sounds rather mundane now, but it created for us great memories and was part of a super glue that has held us together for these last sixteen years.

Sixteen years ago I brought along with me to Nantucket a strong sex drive, hunger for a woman’s acceptance, good legs, a strong back and a smaller prostate. This time I needed Viagra and forgot it. My foot hurts when I walk. I left my golf clubs and tennis rackets at home. I wouldn’t dare go out in a sailboat again. What am I doing but coming back to Nantucket to ruin our memories, to mess with the magic spell cast upon our “once-upon-a-time,” to mix the cruel reality of getting old with the wonder and optimism of upward mobility of the late thirties. As I write this, contemplating this trip, this all feels like a lose/lose proposition to me. I can see my wife’s disappointed face contrasting our 55-year-old moments with our late thirties first kiss time.

I can’t stand to disappoint her. I have finally found marital bliss after two failed marriages. Marietta, my third wife, seems to really love me. I’m not sure why. I think one of the reasons was the magic we shared on Nantucket and here we are about to shatter those youthful memories with senior moments of “I can’t get on the bike because of my bulging prostate.” “Sailing? No, been there. Becalmed once. Not again.” “Want to run on the beach? No, I can barely walk.” “Make whoopee? Let me call my doctor for a script. I am especially intimidated by the whoopee.”

So here we are now. The first leg of our flight had deposited us in the Providence, Rhode Island airport among fellow travelers right out of Canterbury Tales, each with their traveling misadventures. One guy has lost one of his three bags, the one containing his cell phone and palm pilot. Then there is the desperate, thin, blond, athletic mother with firm upper arms, with her infant and two other children under four and their nanny. She can’t get her entourage on the overbooked flight. With tears in her eyes she pleads to us and the other passengers to give up five seats on the flight so that she and her children won’t have to take the next plane.Her pleading voice increases the tension in an already tense waiting area. She lays the guilt on thickly as she please with all the passengers who checked in before here. The children are now yelling, too. The four-year-old girl wants to torment the baby. The nanny yells trying to protect the baby. The three-year-old wants to push the baggage cart and race it down the airport hall. The mother constantly pushes her disgust and anger on to Cape Air staff, young college-aged boys right out of the 1980s TV show Wings. Oh sweet memories are made of this?!

There is another blond woman with two children. The difference is that this woman has tickets to board our plane and a husband present. She also has a Jack Russell terrier with arthritis, a bird, complete with cage, five small trees that mimic a children’s drawing of a tree—a stick with a green ball at the top, a hard plastic cage with a rabbit inside. Each of her two boys has his own exotic lizard with orange markings on the bottom of their necks, complete with identical carrying cases along with two pet crabs. The coupled mother tries to commiserate with the damsel in distress mother as she continues her assault on the airplane ticket boy she calls “Jason.”“Well how did you get on the plane?” she asked of the first mother. “We had reserved five seats and we got here just after you did.” Then they both turned and looked at Jason who had the look of a treed cat surrounded by dogs.“I don’t know,” Jason answered feebly.

The three year old damsel’s daughter began another round of whining. “Mother I’m hungry. I want some ice cream.”

Suddenly her mother picks up her daughter who is crying “I want ice cream” over and over and pounces her on the ticket counter in front of Jason as Jason is trying to help another passenger with a complaint. “Tell it to Jason,” she says, aiming her daughter’s tantrum straight at her nemesis, Jason. “Tell him you are hungry, that you have to stay here in the airport for another hour and a half and maybe still not get on the plane. And if you can’t, then you will have to rent a car and ride in a car with your crying baby brother and sister who are also hungry and then go on a ferry for a two hour sea sick ride. Tell him.”

Jason and the boy just starred at each other in stunned silence. The mother with the birdcage insincerely said, “I could take the baby in my lap if that would help.”“What will I do with myself and the other children,” was her answer. “I could leave the nanny behind to catch the next available flight, but I would still need three seats and if I could get on I could hold the baby. But thank you for offering. That’s the only offer of help I’ve had for the last three hours,” and with those words she turned and starred at Jason.

We were relieved when they announced our flight and left the angry mother behind. Nine of us including the other mother with the birdcage, nanny, husband, two children, a dog, lizard, rabbit and trees were escorted out to a small two engine Cessna. I was “invited” to sit in the co-pilot’s seat. I was a bit alarmed by the small plane that I imagined was like the one John Kennedy, Jr. crashed off the coast of Nantucket. I was even more alarmed when I sat in the co-pilot seat, the black paint around the instruments and the controls in front of me worn away to the metal, holes in the dash I could see through all the way to the nose cone of the plane.

The woman with her husband, children, rabbit, et al sat directly behind me. The dog sat on her lap, the birdcage on her husbands. The trees got a roomier space in the back of the plane.

She now had caught the damsel in distress disease. She turned to her husband and growled, “You know I’m afraid to fly and you put me in an airplane made of popcorn popper foil.”

“I don’t feel safe,” she continued. “You promised me that I would not be afraid.”

“Ma’am there is nothing to be afraid of,” the pilot interjected.

“It’s the Saturday before the fourth of July. You could be a terrorist and you are flying a tin can. Are you lonely, depressed? Do you like your job?”

“Ma’am I do like my job,” the pilot responded. “I’m not suicidal. I’m not lonely and depressed. I love to fly. I fly Lear Jets during the week and I fly for Cape Air on the weekends during the season. This is a safe plane, ma’am. They do a good job at Cape Air keeping their planes maintained.”

“That’s what they said about John John’s plane,” This time talking to her husband. “It’s hot, I’m sweating and you know how I don’t like to sweat.”

It was hot. We had to wait in the plane on the tarmac for permission to take off for what seemed like forever. The plane had no air conditioning and the heat from the black tarmac with nine people in a small plane was oppressive.

“I’m sorry,” the husband said. “I didn’t know the planes were this small. It was a mistake.”

Just then the pilot began to start the engines. First he ignited the left one. It coughed and sputtered but would not start. Then he tried the right engine. It did the same. He repeated this three times.“It was a mistake,” she said glaring at him with her gritted teeth. “The problem is you don’t learn from mistakes. It is important that you learn this time.”

The engines finally caught. The propeller hum joined the extremely loud engine roar.I glanced at the husband. His meek expression and swallowed pride announced to me that he was having an affair or he was about to. How else could he tolerate this humiliation?

The plane taxied out onto the runway and took off. Soon we were in the air with the consistent engine noise and vibration dominating every other sensation. The ride was stable. The mother was calming down or she realized that her fate was now completely in the pilot’s hands.

“I’m sorry I was so critical. I know you need to be calm to do your job,” she said to the pilot. “Perhaps I can do something for you to make it up. I want to be sure you are relaxed. I could give you a backrub if that would help.”

“No thank you, ma’am,” the pilot replied, “You need to keep your seatbelt on at all times.”

We arrived in the Nantucket airport at 3:30. My bag came. Marietta’s didn’t. That seemed to be the norm here. We took a cab to #2 Chestnut, leaving Marietta’s bag, hoping it would be delivered to our bed and breakfast three hours later.

Chapter Two

We were here now, our destination, Nantucket. We were on the third floor of the Hawthorne House, #2 Chestnut. We shared a bath with two other bedrooms on the third floor. Across the street was a flower shop. Out our window the street was blooming with hydrangeas of different hues of pink and baby blue.We went for a walk. Our comments kept coming back to, “It wasn’t this crowded the last time and there weren’t so many cars.”“The difference is,” Marietta noted, “SUV’s. SUV’s didn’t exist then.” She was right these large cumbersome ugly vehicles overwhelmed their parking places everywhere we looked. But it wasn’t just the SUV’s, it was the numbers of people too. Nantucket was like Panama City, Florida or Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Herds of people milling about in T-shirt shops or tourist shops or real-estate offices or restaurants.  Bed and breakfasts and hotels were everywhere.

At least I wasn’t the only one disappointed nor was I the cause of Marietta’s disappointment. We went to a famous sandwich shop near the wharf that served turkey dressing and cranberry sandwiches. We had one. “Nashville’s Bread and Company’s cranberry pecan chicken sandwiches are better than these,” Marietta said.We napped in the late afternoon. We slept for about an hour. Sweet bliss. After all we got up at 5:30 that morning to get on our 7:10 flight. We showered before super. Our moods seemed to improve.The walk through the maze of town streets to our restaurant was not among the masses. People were on their steps, greeting us with smiles, friendly faces and hellos. The restaurant, the American Seasons was expecting us. Marietta made reservations for us long before we came. We were seated at a small two person table in the server’s traffic pattern to the kitchen. A much better four top table was set for two behind us.“

That must be for someone important,” Marietta said.Soon a young couple was seated there. The woman looked exactly like John Kennedy Junior’s wife. The young man looked like an Italian version of Junior. “It’s her sister,” Marietta conjectured. “You know I think she had one that wasn’t killed in the plane crash.”

“I hope so,” I replied.

Two tables down two thirty-something couples were practicing wealthy yuppie one-upmanship. One husband pulled out a small pocket flashlight to use for reading the menu, a completely unnecessary accessory. The nanny for the other couple arrived with their newborn. “Oh I know it’s silly but I just wanted to give her a kiss before her bedtime,” the mother said. She oohed over her baby and made everybody at the table hold her. Then the nanny took the baby away.

“Bedtime?” Marietta whispered to me. “When isn’t it an infant’s bedtime?”

“I don’t know,” I confessed.

The food was delicious. Marietta had fresh yellow squash soup that had the sweet taste of pureed caramelized Vidalia onions blended into the soup. In the center of the bowl was a small crab cake.Her entrée was a baked halibut with a seafood chowder sauce.

Mine was a grilled Mackerel steak served on a bed of Israelis couscous. The couscous was the size of small pearls. Beside and around the couscous was a red cranberry chutney. The couscous pearls melted sweetly in my mouth and mixed well with the butter-sweet cranberry taste. Marietta and I share tastes. Her halibut and sauce won the prize.

Once in our room after dinner the bed swallowed us in deep dream filled sleep. I dreamed two doctors were working on my head. They had something they were applying on top my scalp. I protested.“I have so few hairs there that each one has a name. Please don’t pull them out,” I begged. But clearly the medical procedure required it. Whatever they were doing felt good. In the dream I dropped off into an anesthetized trance. When I woke from the trance, I had a young face and a head full of tight black curls.

When I really did wake up the next morning the mirror put back my bald head and old face in their proper place. I still had my hairs named Fred, Arthur, Gene, Ted, Ralph, Ethel, etc. Each of whom I’m especially proud of. Marietta and I quickly dressed in shorts, sandals and shirt and were off to breakfast at the Coffin House, a large expensive bed and breakfast near the Hawthorne House.We were seated in an elaborate formal dining room. The people around us were loud. The accents were of Boston or New York.“I like wealthy southerners better,” Marietta said.

“You do?!” I answered. “Why is that?”

“Wealthy southerners wear their wealth in jewels and expensive handbags. These wealthy Yankees shout their wealth to the world in cell phone conversations about the house they are considering buying and they can’t decide which beach would be the best location.”

Marietta was referring to a cell phone conversation we couldn’t help but overhear from a woman sitting three tables away, talking on her cell phone while her husband read Investor’s Business Daily.

After going home for a tooth brush, we rented bikes and exited the town as fast as we could. As I rode behind Marietta, I heard her explain about the color and fragrance of the natural foliage. I couldn’t get myself to gather much enthusiasm for this. I felt like my father who couldn’t be bothered to be interested in any topic not centered around him.I prayed silently for my mother’s spirit instead and for a moment my prayers were answered. I saw the reds, purples, and yellows in the wild flowers that bordered our bike path. These flowers and their colors seemed to rush vividly into my brain and excited my neurons into a soft pleasure. This lasted until we had to paddle up a hill. The burning of my glutes pushed out the colors and replaced them with a narrow task oriented focus of “hurry, let’s get there.”

We reached our destination, Siasconset. It is a small village with a tennis club in the center of town. I don’t know what more there is to say about this place except that it goes by two names “Siasconset” and “Sconset,” and they pronounced exactly the same.The most spectacular thing about this bike ride along Polis Road is the Sconset Golf Club. It is exquisite. As you would expect, it is a lynx course with strong sea breezes. In season it is an exclusive members-only course. Its fairways were a lush green framed by a contrasting tan brown of the sea oats deep rough. Players were walking fast with caddies. The flags on the greens were blown straight south by the wind.Marietta and I went to look at a lighthouse above the course, but all we could do was watch golfers swing and scamper after their ball. To a non-golfer it looks like a serious intense game of hit and go fetch and hit again. Surely a Martian would think this the ultimate silliness for players to become so gravely engrossed in a game of fetch that one might play with a dog. But Marietta and I envied those golfers, tended to by their caddies, walking on their green carpets, surrounded by sea gulls and egrets and breathing oxygen filled ocean air as they played. They seemed so intense and dedicated to their game.Our ride back to town was mainly distinguished by our sore butts and burning hamstrings. Our trek was between twenty and thirty miles with a stop for lunch at Sconset, but for people who haven’t been on a bicycle in two years it was a test.

We were proud that we passed the test when we wheeled into Hawthorne House. We showered and I worked some on my book while Marietta neared the end of her book A Patchwork Planet by Anne Tyler.

For supper we went to the Quaker House just around the corner from us on Centre Street. Paintings of sailboats decorated the walls. They were all by same artist, Kerry Hallam. I’m sure he would be insulted when I describe them as Leroy Neimanesque but I don’t know a better way to describe those vivid sprays of bright colors.

Marietta was sure that our waiter was the artist. “He just looks like a sea captain,” she said. And he did. He had thick dark hair with graying temple and a peppered gray and black mustache.“Are you a sailor?” Marietta asked the waiter.“No,” he replied. “I don’t sail. I’m from New Mexico.”

Marietta was so disappointed that our waiter was not the artist or at least a sailor that she didn’t ask her usual follow-up question of “what is your name and what do you do for fun here?”

“Here is a book of the artist works,” the waiter said, handing us a coffee table art book of vistas looking out from hotel verandas where wealthy tourists once sat, looking over some famous sailboat filled harbor. Among these vistas were a few nudes to legitimize Kerry Hallam as a serious painter.“

Mr. Hallam is a sixty-five year old English gentleman that comes here for supper precisely at 6:00 PM every night.” The waiter explained as he hands us a letter-sized card detailing Mr. Hallam’s biography and his artistic interests and his adventures with the rich and famous, including Bridget Bardot and Salvador Dali. In addition to his paintings one can purchase his autobiography and a CD of songs he wrote in the seventies.After supper we strolled further down Centre Street to the ticket office of the local Improv Theatre group. The theatre was in the basement of the First Methodist Church. It was 8:15 and the performance didn’t begin until 9:00. We bought our tickets and wandered back on to the street to window shop, when it began to thunder and rain. We made our way back to the church and found the large sanctuary doors open. We wandered in the dark sanctuary. What light there was came through the plain large windows from the streetlights giving us enough light to see about, but not enough light to read by.The pews weren’t like most church pews. Here each church pew had a small entry door making each pew an enclosed box. Apparently people at one time rented a pew in the churches here. We wandered down the aisle to the front.Lightning from the storm outside brightened the sanctuary for a moment. It seemed like I had some reason to be there then. I wondered out loud to Marietta, “What is the message here?”

We were both a bit spooked and a bit by the storm and awed by this ghost filled place. We looked up and in the loft above the church floor were several statues of people sitting leaning forward looking down at us.We were startled at first. But Marietta observed “they look friendly enough.” We sat together silently for some time, the only live spirits there.“The message is that fate will provide a quiet place in the chaos of life if you are open to going inside the dark sanctuary,” Marietta finally said in answer to my question.

“So we’re here,” I said, “in this quiet place. What am I supposed to hear in the silence?”

“Yourself.”“

And our parents,” I said looking up at the statues that represented the congregation. “I miss my mother and father, your parents, the generation that left it to us to take our turn standing in support of those before us, back next to empty space. I miss my brother who died when I was fourteen.”

“Maybe that’s why we came inside to the quiet?” Marietta said. “To discover how disconnected we feel. To remember what love is and commit to creating more of it when we go outside again.”

I didn’t answer. We sat in silence for a while longer until outside we heard a voice yelling in the street like a carnival barker, “Improv right here. Come on in.”

We got up and went outside of our quiet place only to go right back into the church’s basement theatre. Inside the theatre nine young people, college age to thirty, held court with the audience. They played many of the standard improv games. The actors were good, but what impressed me was their youthful don’t give up, I’ll try anything spirit, how they encouraged each other, teased each other, promoted each other and trusted each other.

There it was, the thing I yearned for just a few minutes ago upstairs in the church, family, community, brothers and sisters playing having such fun.I was eager to go to bed, to dream to see what other messages might come to me in the dark of night. This night’s dreams weren’t as kind to me as the last. I wasn’t given a young face and a full head of hair.I had three dreams. The first was that I was an English nobleman and that I was in line for the post just under the Prime Minister. There was a collection of people seated in a government hall. The queen and other royals entered. I continued sitting, as did the others. Someone nodded to me and motioned for me to take off my hat. I had my Ben Hogan hat on that I wear inside and out in the winter. I had forgotten that it was on my head. I reached up and quickly grabbed it. A woman with a hat on sat beside me looking compassionately at me. I asked her “why can you wear a hat?” She didn’t answer because the answer was obvious. She was royalty and I wasn’t.It seemed I had a rival for the post, but he didn’t want my post. He wanted to be head of the Navy. Suddenly a choir began to sing accompanied by violins. The choir sang a melody of no words. I somehow knew that the music was the signal for the competition to begin. I got up, as did my rival. We fought a musically choreographed fight like in the movie Hidden Tiger Crouching Dragon. I won. Because I won, I knew I could choose whether or not my friend and rival got the job he wanted.

The two of us approached the prime minister for some sort of vestment ceremony. I announced, “Prime Minister, may I present the next Head of the Admirality.”

My friend stepped forward and was duly installed to his office with pomp and ceremony much as one would imagine King Arthur making someone a knight.Then my friend announced, “Prime Minister may I present the next Deputy Prime Minister.”

I stepped forward. The Prime Minister looked past me as if I didn’t exist. At some point it became clear that something had happened to make me ineligible for the post. That something was that I hadn’t even known the royal etiquette well enough to remove my hat when the Queen came in. I moved away silently.That was the first and most vivid dream.The second dream was a domestic scene in Marietta’s house, perhaps before we were married. Things were being organized and straightened. Marietta’s father who suffered from Parkinson’s disease was shuffling about carrying a couple of forks. He looked as if he once had a purpose, but had long since forgotten it. Marietta’s mother was exasperated and motioned for us to get him out of there. And we did.That was the second dream.In the third dream, Southwestern (now Rhodes College), my college alma mater, was playing a football game. Somehow three teams were playing. It was like a tournament and Southwestern would play the winner of the game between the other two teams. I saw the kickoff of the first game. The ball went all the way through the end zone. It appeared to be a very good kick. I retrieved the ball. It was a goofy ball that had a lot of bounce. Clearly the ball had been toyed with. I went to the coach to tell him. By the time I got to the Southwestern coach, Southwestern was way ahead and it didn’t matter whether the other team cheated or not.These dreams didn’t leave me with the same confidence left by my rejuvenation dream of the previous night. “I know what this means,” I said while we were having breakfast the next morning. “It means that I won’t get my books published.”

“David that’s fear talking,” Marietta said. “You always said that if a dream had a message you couldn’t see that message through the lense of fear.”

“Yeah so what do these dreams mean?!” I challenged Marietta.“

Well in the first dream the rival character achieved his heart’s desire. He became head of the admiralty or military or whatever that was. You were happy about that and he was surprised. Perhaps that means that you won’t get what you wanted at first, but you will be surprised by getting what you really want, that suits you better.”

“That sounds good, but what about my loss of face with royalty?” I asked.

“David,” Marietta said. “That is not you. You will never succeed in a setting that values form above content. You wouldn’t remember to take off you hat. If you got a job that required that level of attention to ceremony you would surely fail. But put you in a charge of military strategy, a job that requires determination and common sense, that’s a job you would be good at.”

“Okay so what about the second dream. I feel like your father in that dream, once having strength and a sense of purpose, but now I have somehow become lost. I pretend to know where I’m going when I really don’t.”

“Yes, you do have a clumsiness about you sometimes,” Marietta said. “But in the dream we got that part of you out of mother’s way. Maybe you can keep the foolish side of you out of the way.”

“That’s good,” I said. “Now what about the last dream?”

“Well that seems to be the easiest one to understand,” she said.

“Not for me.”

“You don’t need to be so competitive or critical,” she said. “Your sibling rival side is unnecessary, because your team in winning. You have always tried too hard to impress and you don’t need to.”

“I hope you are right,” I said. “That makes sense of me.”

We finished our breakfast at Arnonds which, like every breakfast place on Nantucket, seemed to have a version of Eggs Benedict, but I had that the previous morning. I got a scrambled egg with diced tomato bagel and swiss cheese sandwich. Marietta had polish sausage, scrambled eggs and an English muffin. The bed and breakfast gave us two nine-dollar breakfast vouchers, but our hot tea, juice and tip put us ten dollars over the voucher.

The atmosphere at Arnonds was much less pretentious than the Jared Coffin House. It was a café not a formal hotel dining room. People sat quietly, talked, ate and read the paper. Local people had breakfast here. The food was good and the people were ordinary folk.Marietta picked up three newspapers. The New York Times and the local Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror. We sat at our table hungry for news after being away from any media for three days. Nothing much had changed, except, according to the New York Times, German Chancellor Schroeder had found a picture of his father who was killed in WWII dressed in a Nazi uniform. China’s top leaders wanted to admit capitalists in the communist party and Vini Testeverde is in good shape, better than last season, down to seven percent body fat. That’s almost as good as the Titan’s Eddie George’s five percent. I’ll bet Testeverde doesn’t have his own chef life George does.

In Nantucket news the front page announced that the senior van service is being merged with the NRTA (the Nantucket Regional Transit Authority) and the Nantucket Historic Commission (known by locals as the NHC) is on the case of property owners who are neglecting their historic property in hopes that as it deteriorates they can have permission to demolish it and build something more profitable on the lot. “No, we won’t have that in Nantucket,” Commissioner Voigt says.

Now that we were caught up on the essential news of the day, we window shopped and decided to make the obligatory climb up to the Congregational Church tower. From there you can see the whole of the island and islands beyond. I learned that the Congregational Church had formerly been called the Presbyterian Church. These two names were interchangeable because they both had their origins in Calvinism.From the tower windows I saw the island, the harbor, the beaches and the boats. The most interesting thing I saw was a woman and five children having a picnic under a tree in front of the church. All the children were about four or five. “Surely they are not all hers,” I wondered.

“No,” Marietta said. “This looks like a mother who has taken all the neighborhood four year olds on an outing.”

After their snack they marched up the stairs where they became fascinated by the binoculars and the fact that the last Indian executed on the island was hung in this church.“Where did they hang him?”

“What did he do?”

“Was he a bad Indian?”

“Why did they hang him?”

“I saw a man hanging on TV once.”

The adult caregiver tried to distract them with, “look over here, maybe we can see the Endeavor” or “Is that your brother’s school down there?” Eventually it worked and they were discussing more pleasant subjects.From the bell tower we saw Tuckernuck Island. “It has about thirty cottages, no electricity or running water,” the guide said. “This is where Nantucket folk go to get away in the summer. The shelling is good and sun tells you when to go to bed and when to get up. You have a drink at five o’clock, go to bed with the sun and wake up and do it all over again.”

After we left the church tower we went for a bike ride to Dionis Beach. We took Cliff Road. Houses were hidden from the street by hedges with precisely square cut corners, eight feet tall with holes in the hedges for the driveways or hedges shaped so that an arch opened for the front gate.  The glimpses we caught of the views of the ocean from these houses were spectacular.Again the children of this neighborhood fascinated me. They were on bicycles everywhere. Young ones were riding on seats behind their parents seat. Infants were laying in two wheel carriages attached to their parents rear bike wheel. Four year olds were riding on the second seat of a tandem bike, pretending to pedal like a big boy. And children six and above riding on their own bikes, alone, in pairs or in packs unaccompanied by an adult. Nantucket was a parent’s paradise. Bring your children along, throw them on a bike and if they were big enough, they would entertain themselves for the whole day with one biking adventure after another. They could bike to a field and fly a kite, or to the beach or to the sailboat school where they could learn to sail and have sail boat races or to the end of the jetty and back. The island was a safe place for children. Though there were too many cars on the island, all drivers expected to be driving slow behind bicycles. The ocean served as a fence to protect children from dangerous predators. Any grandmother would be proud to bring their grandchildren to such a safe, fun, educational, historic, child friendly place.

Our first stop on the way to Dionis Beach was an outdoor sandwich restaurant and bakery called “Something Natural.” This was the first unique food I had on Nantucket. All the other island restaurants were versions of any resort Deer Valley, Utah, Vail, Colorado, Naples, Florida, etc. The food was good. The prices were a bit high, seafood with an asian flair. Cajun was passé.

But at “Something Natural” the food belonged there in that place. It was as if it emerged on the planet for the purpose of being there. Only a small sign marked this place. It could be easily missed in this purely residential high-end area. We turned our bikes into a gravel drive before we were able to see a bike rack full of bikes and a large yard with picnic tables scattered about, each a comfortable distance from the other, some under trees and some in the sun.We parked our bikes, walked up steps to a back porch where there was a line of people. Outside was a sign that warned patrons to be ready to order, to give their name and money, no charge cards. Inside was the smell of baking bread and shelves filled with breads of all kinds, pumpernickel, whole wheat, eight grain, egg bread, Portuguese bread, and others we can’t remember.We each ordered a lobster and shrimp half sandwich and two Nantucket Tea drinks that are now all over the country and some Nantucket potato chips cooked in peanut oil, no cholesterol. We paid, left my name and found a secluded table in the shade of cherry trees while Marietta waited for the food. Large black birds were boldly foraging around us.

Soon “David” was shouted and Marietta came to join me with our “half” sandwiches. These half sandwiches were huge, the bread easily twice the thickness of Colonial bread. Our eight grain bread was like no other I’ve ever eaten, dense and delicious, with a course nutty texture that announced just milled wheat with each bite. The dark molasses oatmeal raisin cookie was also unique. The respectful comings and goings of patrons reflected that this was a special place. Perhaps this was because of the no-nonsense-to-the-point sign at the porch front door.Our table at the back of the yard was half in the sun and half in the shade. We sat there and talked about I don’t know what for a deliciously long time, taking in the sea air, the sun and the graceful movements of people serving and being served good food.

When we could put off our departure no longer, we hopped back on our bikes and peddled toward the beach. The wind was strong. The wind and the hills pushed us and our bikes down into our lowest gear. As we struggled up the hills one bicycle racer, dressed for the part, whipped past us from behind. A few minutes later he came racing toward us. Then again he came upon us from behind. He clearly demonstrated that we were fifty-five and he was not.As we reached the bike rack at Dionis Beach our cell phone rang. It was Fran. Fran is a child development specialist that I sometimes consult with on custody cases. Fran also loves the Cape Cod area. She grew up there as a child spending every summer on its beaches.

“Do you know where I am?” I asked.

“No.”

“I’m at the dunes of Dionis Beach in Nantucket.”

“I had no idea,” she said.

“I’m sure you would appreciate this much more than I do,” I said.

“Oh you must drink in the ocean. The ocean is wonderful. It will change your life.”

We finished our conversation about a case and her words kept rebounding in my head, “you must drink it in… The ocean will change your life.”

Fran is one of my most important mentors. She has been involved in professional child care for forty years. She remains devoted and excited about children. She swims a mile or more every other day, and every day when she can. She is retired, but she can never retire, because the world needs her wisdom too much to let her go. And here she is telling me to “drink in the ocean.”

Well it has too much salt in it, I’m not sure I want to. And if she means something other than drink the water I’m sure I don’t know how to do it. “It (the ocean) will change your life.”

This reminded me of when I was a boy and the missionaries would come to our church and talk about God calling them to go to Africa. I didn’t want to go to Africa and I didn’t want God to call me there.

There are things about my life that I don’t want to change. I have a wonderful loving wife and I don’t want the ocean to change that. I have a profession that I often enjoy that has given me a modicum of comfort and I don’t want the ocean to change that.

Yet, I do yearn for something from the ocean. Can “drinking in the ocean” purify my heart? Can looking at the source of life, water lapping at dirt, can seeing this huge unfathomable liquid expand into the horizon in front of you bringing with it a new kind of peace.

These questions came with no answer except the answer that Fran had a talent for discovering things on the seashore that I did not.Before I could think much further about this question, Marietta and I came upon a man with his nine month old and their dog sitting just at the line on the beach where the water was washing into his feet. The dog was begging for him to throw his ball in the ocean for her to chase and the baby was taking it all in, fascinated by his father, the dog and the ball.

“We miss our dog Greco,” Marietta said. “May we take a picture of you with your dog?”

“Of course,” he said.And we did. I’m not sure I want to look at that picture, but I wonder if that was one way to drink in the ocean. Perhaps he understood what Fran meant.

We walked further down the beach. No one was there for miles. It was a perfect beach. The sun made diamonds on the water. The sea gulls worked with the wind to stay in one place in the sky. Little turins raced back and forth along the beach in front of us. I kept looking for something that would change my life, afraid that I would find it.

We had to be back to town to go on a sunset cruise Marietta had booked for us at 7:00 PM. It was five now. So before I could get any clear answers to my questions about drinking in the ocean, we had to get back on our bikes.Riding our bikes back was much easier. The wind was with us. Once at the Hawthorne House we changed quickly and bumped our bikes over the cobblestones to the wharf. Two couples joined us on the cruise. The captain owned the twenty-five year old freshly painted lobster boat turned tourist cruiser. We lumbered out of the port, passing lines of yachts at anchor. These boats were up to 100 feet long. It costs fifteen dollars a foot per night to rent a mooring, plus water and electricity. That boat costs fifteen million dollars,” our captain said. “It was commissioned today. Its name is the Timoneer. It costs 10% a year of the cost of the boat for its upkeep. That’s $1,500,000. Its tallest mast is as tall as the boat is long, one hundred and fifty feet.” This boat was a sailboat with three tall masts, decorated with flags because of the celebration for the commissioning.Once out of the harbor we passed homes with harbor views. “See that lot there,” the captain pointed to an empty spot between two large houses. “There was a home there. The fellow who bought the house tore it down. He plans to build a new house there. It was a fine home. He paid five and a half million for a lot. You’re from Tennessee right,” he said talking to us.“Yes,” I replied.“That’s Senator Bill Frist’s house. Over there on that point is a house that cost thirty-five million dollars. The owner spent ten million for the house next door for the staff. These folks all belong to the Nantucket Gold and Country Club. The initiation fee is $500,000.”

The cruise continued with the captain pointing to houses of the rich and some marginally famous, “Senator so and so.” “So and so’s house, he’s CEO of Morgan Stanley.” Soon we reached our half way point at the jetty’s beach. The sun was just above the water line as we turned back toward the port. In ten minutes it had disappeared and the air began to cool. Marietta and I snuggled against the cold. It was difficult for us Nashvillians to believe that it was July 2nd and we wished for a fire.

We also learned that the water in this harbor was only about ten feet deep, that it can freeze in the winter, that all these boats will be gone by October, that these waters are harvested for bay scallops. Somehow this information, nor the water, nor the sunset could penetrate my preoccupation with the wealth that surrounded me. I was having a hard time not hating these rich people or wanting to be just like them. I don’t think I would spend thirty-five million on a house that was used one month a year and then most of it is unoccupied. No, I wouldn’t buy or build a twenty million dollar boat, but I might own my own golf course if I could. I hoped not. I realized that Marietta and I were among the poorest on this island. We were staying in the cheapest bed and breakfasts sharing a bathroom with two other couples. We could barely afford to rent bicycles much less rent a car or pay the freight to bring one over. Everything around us shouted status, better-than/less-than and I knew which one we were. It was hard for me to reel-in my competitive juices. It was a comfort to me that the Tennessee Titans could beat the hell out of the New England Patriots. It felt good to realize that Nantucket’s 7,000 year round residents had a great tax base. They must have the best schools and fire departments in the country.Being here was a spiritual exercise in accepting myself and my limits. It is unlikely now at fifty-five that I will be a rich man or the president, though I met a president and I was personally acquainted with a vice-president. See it’s hard to stop this comparing and competing once it gets started. Much of the time I failed this spiritual test, especially when I heard Marietta say, “Ooh look at that. Isn’t that beautiful” and I knew I could never buy it for her.

Once on dry land we hurried to find some warmer place to eat. We rode our bikes to the Lobster Trap. This was a sports bar and lobster restaurant. The captain of our sunset cruise warned us not to stray too far from the menu here. “Stick with the lobster,” he said.

We made the mistake of ordering fried calamari. We got more grease and cornmeal breading than calamari, but the lobster was good and rich. After we finished I had satisfied my lobster craving for the next two years.We bounced our bikes over the cobblestones on the way back and our bikes bounced my prostrate into my shoulders. The beer from supper and the bed engulfed us quickly. This night I did not find any dreams to collect. No message from the netherworld this night.We awakened to our last full day on Nantucket. Our primary mission was to find the golf course where he hit golf balls in the fog. We called Siasconset golf course, not being sure that it was the one. They said they had no tee times, but they might be able to work us on the course with another twosome after 2:30.

We had our Arnond’s breakfast and puttered around town looking at store windows. I came back to Hawthorne House and took my daily shower, etc. We climbed on our bikes for our trip to the golf course about 1:00 PM. We stopped on the way at the Rotary sandwich place and ate turkey sandwiches on good whole what bread under a side porch.When finished we looked for a bathroom. There was none. That was a common experience for us. Many lunch places had no bathroom. In fact there were few such public facilities. Luckily we thought we could hold it till we got to the golf course. We didn’t know we would spend the next hour lost en route.

We found the golf course at 2:45. Sore legs, back and butts got off our bikes. I was delighted to be here. It was the same place where the magic fog flowed onto the course sixteen years ago. This was the place that I gave the credit for fooling Marietta into falling for me. Back then she seemed to be so impressed hat I had the faith to hit my golf ball into the fog on a course I had never played before. Now that Marietta is a golfer I’m not sure that she would find it so astonishing or lovable quality, but then she did.Today was a full sun day. No mystery. The buildings had been enlarged. The course was full of golfers with golfers waiting and other golfers hitting practice balls on the range. The wind blew constantly from west. The starter promised to work us into a group as soon as he could. We rented golf clubs and Marietta and I hit practice balls to warm up and kill time.

At 4:45 the starter teamed us up with a young, barely thirty couple, Brek and Julie. They were married living in New York City. At first I thought Fate had given us the chance of playing with ourselves as a younger couple. But soon I saw that there were few parallels between Marietta and me and Brek and Julie. They were just thirty and been married for five years. Brek just merged his dating service company with another one and was suddenly independently wealthy at thirty. That was certainly not me. Julie just quit her job as a journalist to consider her future. Marietta has not been unemployed since she was a twenty-four year old teacher. Marietta wouldn’t know how to “consider her future.”

They were considering children in four years. We had tried, but none came. No these people don’t yet know what it’s like to fail at marriage as I had twice or to become a widow, alone at thirty two as Marietta had. By the time we met both of us had been defeated by life again and again, but we were still trying. At thirty-nine we had the courage to look each other in the face, see fear and failure and risk it again.As blessed as Brek and Julie were, I did not really want to trade places with them. I treasured the lessons our pain had taught us. I could look into Marietta’s eyes and see the depth of courage that stared back at me. Oh I could trade my back and prostate for Brek’s and Marietta would like Julie’s waist, but other than that we were glad to be us.

We finished our nine holes at 7:30, jumped on our bikes and rode directly to the Sea Grille Restaurant. We walked in just as we were from the golf course, golf hats on golf tees behind our ears and golf balls in our pockets.“You had better appreciate the fact that I can walk into a nice restaurant like this without having to go home and dress first,” Marietta said.

“I didn’t know that there was such a quality to appreciate,” I said. “But I know now and I do appreciate it.”

We had a dozen fresh oysters for an appetizer. I had bay scallops that were harvested yesterday. Marietta had “at first bite” bluefish. The fish and scallops did have a taste we had not experienced in Nashville. The bluefish was not fishy or oily. It had a delicate flaky texture that laid softly on the tongue. It was flavored with olives and tomatoes. My scallops had a sweet flavor. They were large for what are traditionally termed bay scallops.It was dark when we finished eating. We had to peddle our bikes back without benefit of front or back lights on streets that often had no street lights. Luckily there was not much traffic. Once back Marietta was not ready to call it a night. We parked our bikes at the Hawthorne House. We wandered among restaurants until we found one that would serve us tea and dessert at 9:45. Cioppino was the one. We had a delicious apple torte with fresh strawberries, blueberries and raspberries sprinkled on top with a dollop of vanilla ice cream on the side. After we gobbled it up, competing for melted drops of the ice cream, we left Cioppino’s and returned to the Hawthorne House and bed.On this night I did dream. I dreamed that my sister Betsy had found a young mentally challenged man who was in love with her. Betsy was born with Down syndrome and is now at forty-eight having a variety of physical ailments. Betsy is an exceptionally bright Down syndrome adult. She is able to live semi-independently. In my dreams this young man needed Betsy’s intelligence and Betsy needed his physical competence. And Betsy enjoyed bossing him around.

This felt just like me. I don’t feel like the brightest light on the Christmas tree or the strongest. But sometimes I have good sense to offer and sometimes I have strength. Maybe with my confession of inadequacy I had found a strange marriage of these qualities inside myself. The requirement for accessing them is that I acknowledge that there is a lot I don’t know. That’s not something I do easily or often, but it is something I often feel.It was Wednesday, our departure day. Turbulence at the boundaries. I was worried that we wouldn’t get back Wednesday night. New England was expecting a storm. I was afraid we might get socked in either at Nantucket or Providence or even Islip, our stop over. We called a taxi to pick us up at 3:00 and called Cape Air to confirm our reservations. We had our Arnond’s breakfast. It was the fourth of July. Arnond’s was on Main Street. Main Street was blocked off to traffic and parking. A pie eating contest was being organized. A fireman’s water fight was being planned for noon. The day’s activities included a slick pole contest, a dunk tank, puppet theatre, and rope tug on Jettie’s beach. Fireworks were planned for 9:00 PM, but there would be a test fire first, because some July 4th’s are so fogged over that the fireworks can’t be seen or heard. In that event the fireworks were to be rescheduled for the next clear day.We’re going to miss most of these festivities, but we couldn’t miss the fact that Nantucket is a patriotic place. The stars and stripes were flying everywhere. Red, white and blue bunting decorated most stores and museums. People were handing out free small flags.We walked down to the wharf. I want to see the Timoneer, the just commissioned sailboat up close. We walked past one hundred or more motorized yachts that were between seventy-five and one hundred and fifty feet long. And they were deceptively wide, some nearly fifteen feet. As we looked inside these sometime three story floating mansions, we saw large formal dining rooms, entertainment rooms with big screen TV’s. Someone on board one boat yelled out a question to the boat’s owner. “Does it cost money when someone calls you on the phone?” All the boats had satellite phones that don’t depend on cell phone towers or phone lines. We didn’t hear the answer to the question.As we walked up to the Timoneer, we were able to see those on board. Seven crew members were all dressed in a uniform of white tennis shoes, gray Bermuda shorts and a yellow golf shirt. They were tending to the boat, or serving food to a party of ten people. None of those ten people being served were younger than seventy years old.

“So maybe that’s it,” Marietta said.

“Maybe what’s it?” I asked.

“Well they’re old,” she observed, “and you can’t take it with you and they don’t have much time left. That’s why they built this. For fun.”

“But why would someone build this useless toy just to die and leave it behind?” I asked. “What good does it do for posterity or naval history or anybody? After the owner dies, what will the heirs do with it? Give it away as a tax shelter? But who would take it? Taking it would cost a cool million and a half per year. I don’t get it.”

“Well it is a puzzlement?” Marietta admitted imitating Yul Brenner in the King and I.

Little spittles of rain began to fall. We sought shelter at Bosins, an outdoor restaurant with an awning on the wharf. There was a long line of people waiting. The person in charge was in the process of refusing to take more names, because they couldn’t seat those waiting for at least an hour or so.Marietta asked if we could eat at the bar where she had spotted two empty seats. Eventually the answer was yes.We shared a lobster bisque and a grilled shrimp salad with bow-tie pasta and greens. The bisque was wonderful, but the salad needed to be dressed. After we finished eating we meandered back through the rows of galleries and shops toward our bags at the Hawthorne House. The cab fetched us promptly at 3:00 and ferried us to the airport. We checked in. Our bags were loaded on the plane. I saw them go into the hole myself. The flight to Providence was in a similar Cessna to the one that brought us to Nantucket, except this time we had a co-pilot and only six passengers who made no complaints.

We arrived in Providence changed planes to Southwest and there is nothing else to tell except that we arrived home safely.

In Hrumph: Traveling with a Difficult Man who Really Doesn’t Want to Go I quoted Frances Mays as saying that all trips are quests, pilgrimages for the discovery of a new way of life or a new self. Often the traveler doesn’t know what they are looking for or what question they are asking or that they are asking a question. When I wrote that book I wasn’t sure what my quest was until after I returned home and reflected on my trip and what I had written.Before I left on this trip I had lunch with Jules Seeman. Jules was a professor at Peabody while I was in graduate school. He was an important mentor and model for me then and has remained so since. He had agreed to read my book for therapists to review and critique my ideas and writing.Jules is now north of eighty. His age was no impediment to his reading and commenting on my book. He gave me many helpful ideas that I put to use immediately after our meeting. One of the things he inadvertently said to me was that he believed that only two things mattered to him and they were connection and communication.Though on this trip I confirmed my fear that I was no longer a young man, I discovered that my sexual prowess was not what mattered to Marietta. She reported that she had a wonderful time on our trip and if I were to guess the reason for her satisfaction, I would nominate the fact that we enjoyed talking and discussing our experience and we enjoyed one another’s good company. Age will take many things from us, but there is no reason that we have to lose those qualities as we get older. Thank you Nantucket for another wonderful experience. I am no longer afraid of you.