Dancing: an essay from 2020

“So they called at the inn
for a room to dance
and who but they danced merrily —
and the very best dancer among them all
was Old John Webb who was just set free.”

“The Escape of Old John Webb” was on the Kingston Trio’s 1960 album “String Along,” which I listened to countless times. It is one of approximately 98 million songs that mention dancing, and, like dancing, it is clever and lively and a bit obscure. When it came out, it sparked controversy (of course it did), because the Trio (as I understand it) had a habit of taking old ballads from England or wherever, changing a few things around, and claiming credit for the resulting “new” songs. Some people didn’t like that.

At least when your feet dance the cha-cha, you don’t have to pay royalties to anyone (though if you want some music to dance to, you do).

Dancing back in the days of Old John Webb did sound like fun, in a way. Yet it seems odd that when Old John manages to regain his freedom, he celebrates, not by shooting off fireworks or something, but by moving across the floor in a series of formal, socially-acceptable patterns. Pretty tame, there, Old John! Is that really the best you can do?

My own history with dancing is characterized by experiences ranging from elated abandon to acute embarrassment. I’m going to sketch in just a few of them here. (I should add that I’m talking about dancing in which I was a participant. Dancing in which I was not, that would include Alwin Nikolais, Pilobolus, Alvin Ailey ((but no ballet, no, no)), plus numerous step dancers, morris dancers, swing dancers, and practitioners of Appalachian clogging. That’s for another day.)

•    Let’s begin with Mrs. Ferguson’s after-school dance class. In my town, parents who wanted to expose their eighth-graders to the social graces signed them up for “Fergie’s.” When you heard that your folks were sending you to her dance class, you knew that there was no getting out of it. Mrs. Ferguson was an institution. For years she had been running beginners’ classes for large groups of maturing schoolchildren in the spacious and high-ceilinged grand ballroom of the Maugus Club. The Maugus was usually open only to members-and-their-guests, so this was one of the few ways to see it from the inside. Mrs. Ferguson, it was said, hailed from a tony neighborhood in an old-money part of Boston. On the dance floor, she stood with extreme good posture, tall and broadshouldered on tiny feet, resembling a plumb bob. She was a solitary and commanding presence, the center of our uneasy attention, imparting instruction in dance, with dollops of deportment, while we, fidgeting in our churchy clothes, sat as quietly as we could on hard chairs around the perimeter of the room. We stared at her, trying hard to listen. Because maybe something about this would turn out to be really important, who could tell? In that respect, it was very much like church. Mrs. Ferguson did not solicit questions from her pupils. There was simply the teaching, the rituals, and, on your part, the accepting, the doing-or-dying. That was dance, then: a beautiful potential, which could become the wondrous creation it deserved to be, only if everyone kept their mouths shut and strictly followed the rules, of which there were many.       

We had to learn and never forget how to do many proper things: invite a young lady to be our dancing partner (a girl you might have thrown a snowball at the previous winter), how to hold our partner in standard ballroom dance position (“facing partner, slightly offset to the left, lower bodies together, upper bodies apart, both looking left; the man’s right hand is just below her left shoulder blade and her left hand is on his upper right arm”). We boys stood close enough to our partners to sense that girls, too, perspired. For many of us, learning to dance was a tough climb, partly because the boys were expected to lead. First we had to summon the energy and presence of mind, then we had to hold that energy in check. Some of the boys suffered bouts of bashfulness; I saw one of Fergie’s assistants grab one of these boys and shake him hard by the shoulder. “Now, do it!” How could they be expected to turn him into a little gentleman if they didn’t first cleanse him of his bashfulness?

The dances we learned were basic and few: the waltz, beginning with one session devoted entirely to mastering the box step; the foxtrot; the cha-cha; and the lindy. There was a ray of hope in the lindy, because it was clear you could dance it to rock ‘n’ roll, as Fergie’s assistants demonstrated for us. The lindy was fun, and I would try to get better at it, many years later.

•     Multiple ballroom-dance tune-ups in my 20’s and 30’s, to get me ready for this or that wedding reception. Or at least make it so that I wouldn’t be watching my own feet most of the time. When the rubber hit the road, though, I usually forgot everything I’d learned.

I was to be an usher at my older brother’s wedding in 1970, and it was explained to me that I would be paired up with one of the bridesmaids, and would be expected to dance with her at the reception, alone and in full view of the hundreds of assembled guests. To wow them with my style and aplomb, you see. This demanded a private lesson, at a small studio down by the railroad tracks, a setting not at all like the Maugus ballroom. I had no girlfriend at the time, so they supplied a practice-partner for me, a pretty teenager in a black leotard and leggings and a short skirt in a bright red plaid. As soon as we went into dance position, I suddenly felt very warm and my mind went blank. I don’t know what I learned, but I forgot it as soon as I learned it, maybe before.

Then there was Madame Rosa. Before Annie and I got married in 1984, we felt that another tune-up was needed. (The need to dance in ballroom style kept cropping up! Like crabgrass!) We chose Madame Rosa’s out of the phone book because we could walk there from our apartment. Her studio, with walls covered in red flocked velour, was in the turret of an immense Victorian. Within it stood the great mound of Rosa herself, once a lithe dancer of note, many years before, now covered in a long gown that matched her walls. Annie and I stood in dance position, but so far apart (the better to see our feet) that Rosa was moved to exclaim, “My goodness! Have you two just met?” She did teach us one thing that stuck: in the waltz, when your weight went onto your left foot, say, you had the option of turning your head slightly to the left and glancing away to the far corners of the room. Then doing it with your right. It extended the form of the dance, making the two of you appear more graceful, and really, we needed all the help we could get.

•    The loose and sometimes drunken boogeying of my college years, and the decades that followed. This was emancipation: to think that there could be dancing where you didn’t need to know any steps, didn’t need to lead, could change partners freely or dance by yourself or sit down to rest at any time. When they put a Grateful Dead jam on the stereo and cranked up the volume, or the Stones’ “Some Girls,” or Toots and the Maytals, you were going to jump out on whatever dance floor there was, and do what came naturally. Naturally!

Later, the rising popularity of disco put pressure on us free-form dancers to, once again, take a partner in dance position and execute rehearsed and exact steps out on the floor. I took a pass.

•     Contras and squares. When you marry a fan of folk dancing, sooner or later you’re going to find yourself at a contradance or square dance. The music sure is sweet but you’re not allowed to sit off to the side and listen to it. You’re there to dance, so, up on your feet everybody! Nor are you allowed to rely on your more experienced partner; in the course of the evening, the caller will invite you, not to say pressure you, to “now thank this partner and go find another one.” Yikes! They said this was supposed to be fun!

In a contradance, all the available dancers pair up, with the individuals in each pair facing each another, forming two long straight lines down the length of the hall. The music starts, the caller calls, and the convolutions ensue. The patterns of the choreography repeat, and are fashioned so that a couple will end up traveling the length of the set to its bottom, where the two dancers trade places and get ready to enjoy the dance anew, now from the point of view of traveling up the set. Got it? The caller stops giving detailed directions after a few minutes, and the dance goes off on its own like a living thing. Beautiful! But: in the event of a misstep, contradances are difficult to stop and reset. If you, the easily-flustered beginning contradancer, turn left, say, instead of right, or forget to cross over, or happen to sneeze and lose a beat or two, not only are you lost, but so is the whole set you’re in, and the lines crumble. Embarrassing!

That’s why I will always prefer a square over a contra. In a square dance, the four couples that make up each square, though they may go through all kinds of steps of varying complexity, will always wind up back where they started. So if anyone gets lost, the square can regroup and start over within a few measures of music. Safety dance!

Need I add that no adventures in dancing such as these will be happening this week, or this month, or possibly at all, this pandemic year. Aside from taking lessons online, or practicing at home with or without family members, or watching performances on TV or other devices, dancing has ceased. This is remarkable.

The Whole World in His Hands: an exercise in writing about two unrelated things

His powers of perception were open for business.
He smelled wood smoke and sawdust, vinegar and leather and felt
the cold outside trying to get in. He heard a horse snort in his neighbor’s barn.

He was in the kitchen, about to pare an apple, six of them actually, a mix of varieties.
This one was a Granny Smith.
He had to pare them, because his apple-peeler-corer gizmo was broken.
“Pare,” now there’s a word. An old word. People began paring things hundreds of years ago.
To chop and to slice, they used to use sharpened stones, until somebody
thought to borrow some small blades from the keepers of the weaponry.
So now he was back in the seventeenth century or something with a steel blade and some dough,
an oven getting warm, and an assortment of apples to peel, for a pie.

It was going well so far. He held the apple in his left hand,
cradling it with his fingertips and the sides of his fingers.
His right hand, now, it had several jobs to do.
In the curl of his four right-hand fingers he held the wooden handle of the knife,
its blade pointed towards him.
His right thumb extended away from his hand as if it didn’t want to have anything to do
with those fingers, or like a “thumbs-up” gesture but pointing out to the left instead of up.
Both his right thumb and the four curled fingers also helped to hold the apple,
and kept it from jumping up and falling to the floor.
But mainly his hands worked together to advance the blade against the skin of the apple, just so.
With slight but firm pressure his hands rotated the apple so that the blade,
guided with care, bit through the skin, just enough, not too much, and his right fingers,
clutching, drew the blade on and under the skin, further and further,
while his right thumb braced against the as-yet-unpeeled part of the apple.
A lot going on! Pressure this way and pressure that way, all for the desired outcome.
In this way he separated the peel from the apple, but took care not to cut away
too much of the white “meat” of the apple. That white part was the grail.

Again and again the blade approached his thumb, almost touched it, sometimes did
touch it, just a tart little kiss, the sharp blade against the soft thumb pad.
He had learned how to do this from someone long ago, not his father. Probably his mother.
He would have been a balky pupil then. He had really wanted to know how to do it right
and not cut himself in the process, he just didn’t want to be taught.

And his mother knew how to peel an apple, she sure did. And fast!
She had peeled a lot of apples, a lot of potatoes, in her time. On many occasions
he had watched her work the paring knife, a knife he knew to be almost as sharp as a razor,
watched her draw that blade up to her right thumb over and over, and not get cut, ever.
How the heck did she manage that?

Someone had to show you how to do it. You wouldn’t get it by reading directions in some book.

It was going quite well. And now, like the peel separating from the apple,
his mind began to separate from his task, and his task began to go on along without him.
He had started with the first apple up about where the top of Greenland would be.
Because, you know, the apple resembled the planet.

The green apple was spherical like the blue planet, and had two poles on it like the planet
and had a tough outer skin like the planet. And when you rotated it in order to peel it,
it rotated in the same direction as the planet, the western parts traveling right around
to where the eastern parts used to be.

Under his gentle, steady surgery the apple completely became the planet, the one he lived on.
His hands kept working, but by themselves. His mind had gone adrift,
and he was up there in space now, looking down at the apple, his planet.
He could see the oceans, the great deserts, the thick and sudsy formations of clouds.
The blade cut across the globe, a formidable storm edge shearing away the surface of the planet.

Now the blade became a sharp winter gale, the brunt of it a thousand miles wide.
He watched it cut down mountain ranges as it passed through them,
slice off the crests of the mightiest waves far out at sea.
He inclined his head slightly, and the blade became a great ship with a sharp prow,
circumnavigating the globe, rolling and surging, and now it was an enormous silver bird,
wings spread wide, fierce with hooked beak and talons, a shadow of woe.
He looked closer. The blade was now coursing south of the equator,
heading down towards the pole. He could see – what were these? – the high peaks of Chile,
the Galapagos Islands, the vast South Pacific, the parched and forbidding interior of Australia.
He saw these things drawing nearer, and he could hear them and smell them too.
He was no longer in his kitchen but adventuring around the planet, a fearless adventurer,
going off to where the beach sands were black, where volcanoes shot fire skyward,
where the wind knocked his hat off, tore at his coat, pushed him down into the wet heather.

All of the places he could go!

Then he had reached the end of the single long piece of peel. He stood the apple up
on the cutting board and deftly split it. Chop!

My Totally Favorite Month

LEON

My favorite month? Well now, let me see. I’ve always kind of liked October? The trees show off their fall colors, and there’s football, and the football pool at the office, and the air feels fresher than it did all summer. I like apples, and even though the supermarket has fresh apples any time of the year, supposedly “fresh,” well, October is the time to get them from the local orchards, and they just taste better, and it’s good for our local farmers, and it’s also time for six-packs of cider doughnuts to show up at the farm stands next to the apples. Pumpkins! Love ’em. Orange. Fat. Happy. Did I mention football? Oh yeah and Halloween is fun for the little kids, and people put up those inflatable displays in their front yards, and there’s candy corn everywhere and people just seem to get into the spirit of the whole thing. McSweeney’s always runs their “decorative gourd season motherf----ers” post in October, I just love that, it makes me chuckle every time. Yeah. October.

QUINCE 

I like February. Poor old February. To me, “February” sounds like you’ve just had a blowout and are still trying to drive on the flat, febru - febru - febru. Almost everybody likes May and June, but February needs a friend, a support group of sorts, no doubt about it. See, it’s a pretty good month, really; the days of winter are lengthening, and you can shovel snow up until 7:00 or so, and sometimes you have to. You can start your maple sugaring about the 25th; there’s a thought both hot and sweet. You get these tremendously heavy snow storms that make an ice palace of your neighborhood. Just clearing the front walk can make you feel like a hero. You feel vital! Useful! How often does that happen? You find your axe in the shed. You shovel a path to the wood pile, clean off the chopping block, and split a stack of wood for the wood stove. Suddenly you’re super-strong, you’re the Provider, you’re The One Who Brings Heat into the House.

DENISE

I’d like to stitch together my favorite 30 or 31 days from the year, and make up a full month that way. That would be my favorite month. I’d be sure to have one or two of those dazzling sunny days in January after a big storm, that warm day in spring when all of the daffodils have come out in bloom, that superb day in July when you’re up at the lake or just rolling your lawnmower out of the shed, and you look around and say to yourself, wow, I should remember this. Today is one of those days. You don’t get many days like this.

A month of those days, and I’d be good.

ARTHUR

My favorite month is January. That’s a little unusual, I guess. I don’t mind being miserable, you see. When you’re already prepared to be miserable, you’ll never feel let down. You’ll never be disappointed. It’s the same as, if there’s nowhere you have to go, you’ll never be late. February is a close second, but it doesn’t make the cut because it’s short. Not enough misery.

CLARE

My favorite month isn’t one of the twelve months. I feel like that nomenclature is oppressive and outdated. And did you ever see a picture of the Roman God Janus? I mean, really.

So I can’t just single out one of the regular months and call it my “favorite.” With me it’s more like, I really like the four-week period from about the 21st of May to the 21st of June, you know, the final weeks of spring. It needs its own name. Why not Flora? Why can’t we have something like that?

DANIELLE

I’m in favor of renaming our months. I’m not happy with them the way they are. So I’m not about to declare a preference for “June.” Moon, swoon, cartoon, balloon, spittoon. Or “December.” It sounds like something with sharp teeth and a short fuse. And it ends in “brrrr.” We get it already, December is cold.

Instead, I’d like to imagine the month of Bliss. Or the month of Pancakes. The month of Sweet Dreams. The Alpha, and the Omega. The Yin, and the Yang. Or the month of Danielle, named after me, Danielle. Or, the month of Sailboats, or the month of Honeybees. “I was born on Honeybees 30th.” It doesn’t have to be those, just something different from what we’ve had for so long without ever asking why.

Speaking of why, I understand why you need to have twelve individual months, because of the (roughly) twelve cycles of the moon balloon spittoon. I’m not dumb. I know you can’t have a total of five months, or twenty-five. At least, not until those lunar mining industries of the future manage to knock the Moon out of its orbit and into outer space. After that, the Earth will wobble on its axis quite a bit, and you won’t have the tides or the weather or the seasons that are familiar to us now. But you could have as many months as you wanted.

LINDA 

I like November because it’s Thanksgiving and afterwards we put away the leftovers and the dishes and the furniture, and also the menfolk who ate too much and drank too much and nodded off in front of the TV, and then me and Nora and Deena and Joycie get all bundled up and head out to a late-night Dunks for some triple-sugar hot cappucinos, XXXL, and then we hit the stores at midnight, wherever and whenever the big sales are happening. That’s what we’re there for, to get Christmas done early and save us some big bucks, yow-yow! It’s work, sure it’s work, but we like it, we make it fun.

You get my meaning? The women have to do it. The men are no good at it. The men all wait until December 24th and then come home with something half-assed and want you to wrap it. It’s not their favorite thing, Christmas. Or Thanksgiving either, now that I think about it. I don’t know what their favorite thing is, really. With Frank, it might be Bud Light.

BUDDY

Betcha can’t guess what my favorite month is! Well I’ll tell you, it’s all about a jolly old fat guy with a red suit and a red hat and black boots and a bushy white beard, and colorful lights, and snow all around. And our dear Savior, born in a stable in Bethlehem, yes. Twelve days, three kings, eight tiny reindeer, the elves, the evergreen tree, a choir singing carols, the whole shootin’ match. You got it, it’s December!

Of course, it’s a little different up where we are, in the cell block. You need a good memory and a good imagination, and Management won’t be helping you in that respect, or any other. You need to keep your wits about you too, understand? You need to sleep with one eye open, like I used to do when I was a little kid on Christmas Eve: “I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus, underneath the mistletoe last night …”

NAN

I don’t have a favorite month. There’s something wrong with every one of them. I get very depressed. Time hangs heavy. Food tastes like cardboard. People at work whisper behind my back, sssis-ssswis. I notice my reflection in a store window and I’m disgusted at what I see.

ROB

My favorite month is September. It means summer’s over, and it’s back to the grind for another long winter. And the song lyrics come to mind in a flood of melancholy:   

Oh, it’s a long, long while from May to December
But the days grow short
When you reach September

Nobody on the road, nobody on the beach
I feel it in the air, the summer’s out of reach

Try to remember the kind of September, when you were a tender and callow fellow

Now the days are short, I’m in the autumn of my years
And I think of my life as vintage wine, from fine old kegs
From the brim to the dregs … it was a very good year

Oooooo! So poignant, you could just hug yourself.

CATHY 

I like March. Henry Beetle Hough said it: March is Marchy!

KEVIN 

May is my favorite. Up in New England, it’s birds singing, flowers blooming, backyard vegetables growing. A month full of promises made and promises fulfilled. Often chilly and rainy for the first two weeks, May ends up rewarding you with ever-lengthening and ever-warming days.

So I’ll take May, but with this proviso. Statistics show that if the Red Sox are out of it in late May, it’s unlikely they’ll be able to claw their way back to the top by September. Technically it’s possible, but it almost never happens, not for them, not for any team. So you can take stock of your Sox in May, and decide whether you, like me, might just want to let them go again, for another year.

CHARLOTTE

I like August. Hot, humid, steamy, not often rainy, great for days at the beach, one right after another. Like anything else, the sweetest part of a beach day is in the anticipation. Pack the cooler, pack the suits, pack the blanket and the towels, drive down to where the sky begins to look all mother-of-pearl where it meets the ocean at the horizon. Beautiful! We’re here! Hi, everybody! Last one in is a rotten egg!

That’s why I put up one of those rustic-looking “To the Beach” signs in my kitchen, pointed towards the garage, and I have to tell you, the ocean is at least a three-hour drive from here. Call me a landlocked lady who loves the saltwater life. I love digging in the sand, the seabirds crying, fried clams and burgers and onion rings at the clam shack, a lighthouse and boats off in the distance, hydrangeas blooming electric blue, surf and dunes and sandpipers and kites.

Actually, I don’t get to the beach much anymore. My doctor advises against it. Skin cancer. There’s no shade at the beach of course, unless you bring an umbrella. That’s the whole idea of the beach, you’re supposed to be out in the sun, soaking it up.

Also, the water is too cold, even in August, it always takes me forever to get in. Yeah, the “rotten egg.” And I don’t like the way I look now, in a swimsuit. My bad, but it makes me feel self-conscious. Price of gas too, there’s that. So what I anticipate, in August, on the morning of Beach Day, when we have it, is something that used to happen a lot when I was younger but now only happens sporadically. You’ll see me up on the bluff, with my dog, who isn’t even allowed on the beach, and we’ll be apart from everyone, looking out over the sand and the beachgoing beachgoers and the restless waves extending to the sharp line of the horizon, and making do with our bland sightseeing, and me having my old memories.

TAMI

My favorite month? Is that supposed to be a real question? Who are you, anyway? Are you working for the Feds? I know what you clowns are up to in your off-hours down at that pizza place, don’t tell me I don’t. I know what I know and I know my rights too, and I have a right not to be pestered with personal questions of a demeaning nature that you have no right to ask, none whatsoever!!

Trouble With Pants: an exercise in writing about maladjustment

Not long ago, at the end of an evening of movie-watching at home, Annie and I clicked off and then tried to get up from our easy chairs where we’d (at first) sat and then (gradually) slumped since about the second half of whatever we’d been watching. “Oof!” “Ow!” “This gets harder every week!” Annie got about halfway up and then wavered and had to lunge for an armrest to keep from falling all the way back down. “Are you OK over there?” “Yeah,” she said, “I'm just having . . . trouble with my pants.”

Trouble with my pants! I laughed loud and long, knowing that I’d stumbled on my theme for this essay.

Pants? I’ve been having trouble with ’em, sure I have. (Not your pants, my pants. Your pants are your problem and you’re welcome to them.) I’ve been having trouble with my pants for a long time now, years in fact.

“Pants” is a funny word. A dog pants, but a dog doesn’t wear pants. Is a one-legged pants a “pant”? Isn’t “trousers” another funny word? Another plural term for a singular item. It sounds like a name for a pet, a pet dog, you can see it on the side of Trousers’ food bowl: TROUSERS. It would seem to be a noun for something that trouses. I don’t like the sound of that! Keep your trousing hands off of me!

OK, so. What’s the problem with your pants, Dave? 

Well, I’m glad you asked. They don’t fit. Or, perhaps, I can’t get them to fit. (So is that my job then, is that what you’re saying?) NOTHING EVER FITS! I mean, my clothing hangs on me just well enough that I can pass through the world without acute embarassment, which isn’t nothing, I guess. For casual wear, and I dislike any other, my go-to pants are Levi’s 505’s in 36x34, in a “dark rinse” finish, I think it’s called. I run them into the ground, is what I do. I also have some khaki slacks left over from my office days, and wheat-colored hiking pants for when even “good” jeans would be too downscale, and a suit to wear when people die. Nothing in wool. No way. It itches. I’ve got maybe two extra pairs of jeans, the ones that used to be “good,” so torn and stained and grungy I only wear them for yard work.

505’s are the heart and soul of the “dad jeans” look, almost aggressively unfashionable. They’re slimmish but not tight. With wear, they fade, sometimes appealingly, sometimes appallingly, and they get poochy at the knees and at the butt, of course. Let’s skip over that part, OK? I'm aware of what it looks like back there. As the day goes by, I can feel my waistband slipping and the extra fabric gathering in unwanted folds, a real baggy-butt look. It doesn’t bother me except when I see photos of myself.

I inherited my mother’s large rear end (bet you weren’t ready for that), so for a time I kept it partially covered with the tail of my shirt (see below). But you can’t wear that look everywhere. Maybe, you can’t wear that look anywhere. So then you’ve got to take into consideration the belt.

My belt is a thick strip of brown leather meant to hold my pants up day after day for as many years as possible while looking just the teensiest bit manly. But what happens is the belt itself migrates south, owing to gravity. It’s 1.375" wide but the space afforded by the belt loops is 1.875". So the belt settles to the lowest possible position, while the topmost part of the waistband rolls out and over the top of the belt, like toothpaste blurping out of the tube you forgot to cap up last night. Is it a good look, the look you were looking for? No, it isn't.

My mother (my mother!) bought me my first pair of bell-bottoms. Basically they were white with many vertical candy-stripes of all hues, extra wide at the bottom, and more like a velour fabric instead of denim, very soft. Very Carnaby Street, very Incense & Peppermints. Where and when was I going to wear them? While hanging out with my buddies behind the Friendly’s downtown, smoking? But I didn’t do that! Where else, then? Not to church, not to school, not while biking, not while fishing down at the pond. (Or was I getting too old for that now?) I strove to like them, more as a reward for Ruth for at least trying, but I only wore them twice.

How about shirts? These days I own a handful of shirts that I would wear when I’m out in public. Couple of button-down collar shirts from the office days, couple of flannel shirts for cold weather, and maybe four decent t-shirts, all L.L.Bean, all solids, no stripes, no logos, no illustrations, no funny sayings, no nothing. In addition I’ve got some clapped-out t-shirts that I wear only while sleeping, usually because the collar is pulled out of shape or something, but there’s wear left in them. (That’s a strange concept to some folks: that you can look at a beat-up garment and ascertain that “there's another six months of wear left in that.”) My size is 16-and-a-half 34-35, or Tall Large, depending; it took me years (and lots of cash) to figure out what to settle on, what were to be my standards.

NONE OF THEM FIT! My shirts slide around on me. To get a shirt that’s long enough I have to buy one that the shoulder seams wind up somewhere halfway down my upper arm. My narrow shoulders are up near my ears all the time anyway, from excessive shrugging. What about tucking-in? Do we wear these shirts tucked in, or untucked? Look at yourself in a full-length mirror. Your belt-line is at the equator. How’re you looking? Do you want to have a sharply-defined, solid bar at your equator, marking the border between North and South? Or are you a bit self-conscious about packing part of your mother’s anatomy back there, and so maybe you want to fudge that equatorial line a bit, leave that shirttail out, let the North seep into the South a little? Don't ask me — haven’t figured it out!

Reminds me of my own little-kid imagining of the actual “Equator,” on first hearing the word. Right away, I pictured a gigantic silent machine up there in the bright blue sky, obscured just a little by gauzy clouds, an enormous weightless contraption with many flaps and gears and swooping cowlings, a cross between an engine and a fishing reel, but huge, huger than huge, way bigger than the Hindenburg, but silent. A mysterious purpose it had, to “equate” everything on the planet so it would all even out. Did the equator, then, have something to do with daylight savings time, or the shortness of our winter days? Was it part of God?

Let’s stop and think this through. Most of us humans have two legs on the bottom and two arms, a head on top, and a trunk in between. How are you going to clothe all of this territory efficiently, effectively, functionally, attractively, affordably? It’s a set of thoughts that must have kept clothing designers, makers of textiles, and tailors up late at night for many centuries. Speaking as a guy: you’ve got to pull on pants from the bottom and up to your waist. You’ve got to pop two shoes onto your feet, most of the time. (I find it hard to work, even to paint or write, unless I am wearing shoes, although I’m taking a walk on the wild side by writing this in my sock feet.) You’ve got to yank a pullover over your head and down to your waist where it meets your pants, or doesn’t as the case may be. Up and down, that's the quickest way to get yourself dressed enough to answer the doorbell. Maybe you hate pullovers: they mash your hair. So, you grab a shirt with buttons. This garment goes on from the back, not the top. Pay attention: you stick one arm in one sleeve and contort yourself trying to locate the opening to the other sleeve so you can stick your other arm in it. There’s the doorbell again — “Coming!” Then you bring the left side and the right side together in front of you and you button: button, button, button all the way down. How are your fingertips today? Kind of numb and fumbly? Oops! You’ve mismatched the buttons and button-holes and your collar looks ridiculous; you’ll have to start over again!

Where was I going with this? Oh. Shopping. It won’t surprise you that I hate shopping, especially in person. The COVID-related rise in online shopping for every little thing has been right up my alley in this respect. I don’t have to drive to the store, I don’t have to make my way across a hot or icy parking lot, and I don’t have to locate the shelf where my jeans are supposed to be, and then turn around and leave unhappy because they never have them in my size. As long as somebody still makes them, the internet is never out of stock.

Whether online or in-person, I will do almost anything to avoid shopping for clothes, because I don’t like to think about it, and I hate having to spend money that way. It feels futile in any case; I never like how I look. I wonder which came first, the hating shopping or the hating the result in the mirror. Maybe they feed off each other.

I “shop” for utility, and of course for value. In my late teens, the local Army/Navy store was a godsend. Surplus clothing was cheap, durable, permanently out of fashion and therefore squarely in fashion. Jeans themselves were the prime example; part of the uniform of ranch hands, sailors, and blue-collar workers everywhere, they were adopted by students in the sixties as a way of saving money and looking cool, while helping you live down your privileged circumstances, without you having to give up your privileged circumstances. When I entered college in 1968, the small menswear stores that had been outfitting undergraduates for decades with pricey suits, slacks, ties, oxford shirts, and gentlemanly accessories took out their traditional ads in the student paper: “Welcome to Cambridge! Do drop by, won’t you? We probably dressed your father and your grandfather, and now we’d like to get to know you, too.” Instead, you and your friends took the subway down to gritty Central Square or Park Square for some decidedly downscale duds.

So let’s review. I have trouble with my pants, and my shirts. Also with my shoes. Lots of trouble with my shoes. My shoes look dumb. So do my socks. My socks won’t stay up, or they go out at the heel too soon: too thin, too thick, wrong color, too dark, too light, too long, too short. As with shoes and socks, so also with coats, and hats, and gloves. Nothing fits, except approximately, like a dog wearing trousers. Mr. Approximately-Clothed.

I don’t buy dress gloves anymore, haven’t for years. “Dress gloves,” sheesh. Are they gloves or are they a dress? Gimme a break. What am I, going to step out to the symphony or the opera in the winter, wearing Italian leather gloves and a muffler? No I am not. All I require of gloves is that they keep my hands from freezing when I take the dog out for a walk. Is that too much to ask? Evidently it is. The cold seeps in, starting with my little fingers, the outer defenses. I have to thwack my hands against my leg to bring back the circulation, like the protagonist in Jack London's “To Build a Fire.”

Also, my hair! I have trouble with it! When we had to wear our hair short (grade school, high school), I looked like a twerp, frankly. When we could grow our hair out (college), I could pass for cool with my very Hair-like hair. When it was time to get work, I had to cut it short again. But, you know, that was all right, because I was older now and it was beginning to mat down on top, losing its waviness and curliness. Not an attractive white-blond anymore, it was becoming more like a stack of straw up there. What was happening to me? Now of course it’s thinning and losing what life it’s had. I can see that I’m going to be one of those guys with a fussy clump over each ear and a band across the back but nothing on top except a few long, wispy strands, old friends of mine who remember how it used to be and can’t seem to move on.

Also, my skin! I have trouble with it! It doesn’t fit me either. It’s as if there’s someone (me) inside who can’t get out because the skin of whoever this is, this other guy, is holding me in. It itches here and it itches there, and it bunches up where it ought to be smooth and it gets blotchy where it ought to be clear. And it’s pink! Not only am I a white guy ­— bor-r-r-r-ring! — but I’m a pink guy. “Fair,” they call it. Fair to middling. Look at my fingertips! Look at my toes! Or don’t. I'll save you the trouble. They’re pink, a very deep pink!!! I’m not supposed to walk out into the sunlight at midday without a hat and sunblock, maybe not even then. If I do, I’ll be back in the clinic with skin cancer again and this time it’ll be all my fault. I wrote a poem once, a sort-of haiku, to accompany a piece of art, still unfinished:

Skin scorches and cries
For sunblock or shade but
Life wants light hot light

Also, my mind! My mind doesn’t fit me! The fabric and the styling are all wrong, the color is not what I wanted. It belongs to somebody else! The stitching is too tight over here, too loose over there, it’s totally irritating. Can’t I return it for a refund? The garment of my mind both sends and receives the wrong signals. People will laugh when they see me.

I want to be left alone: I don’t want to be left alone: one reason why I write.

Three Common Sense Approaches to Hot Weather

1) Stop talking about how hot it’s going to be today, or tomorrow, or next week, and start talking about how cool it’s going to be … you know, in the early morning or the late evening. Sure, on some days it gets a little warm in the afternoon, but that’s just normal! Who’s in charge down there anyway? Why is it that a few degrees over 100 keep getting all this attention? That kind of alarmism just plays into the hands of the climate crazies. Call your local TV station and demand that their meteorologists start talking up the cooler temperatures. Do it today!

2) These record daytime temperatures — 105, 112, 120 — are frankly un-American and we have to put a stop to them RIGHT NOW. In the first place, why are we still using the Fahrenheit scale? Who is this Mr. Fahrenheit anyway? Some guy from Europe, I’ll bet. We should have thermometers with our own All-American temperature scale. We could call it the ThermoPatriot scale, or better yet, the TrueThermal. Like, when it’s 120 out, say, our TrueThermal would automatically adjust it to read 25 degrees less. So, 95 degrees! Hot for sure, but wouldn’t you feel better right away? And prouder? Call your local TV station and demand that their meteorologists start using the TrueThermal scale instead of that old Fahrenheit. Do it today!

3) What are we, a nation of softies? I never heard such a lot of whining in my life! So it’s a little hot out. Big deal! John Wayne never let a little hot weather bother him, when he was out there winning the battle of Iwo Jima, and neither should you.

Beautification Program

From the Dunnville Garden Club’s website, goldentrowel.com:

Here at the DGC, our mission is to share our gardening skills, expertise, guidance, and enthusiasm for the benefit of the entire community. Since its founding in 1912 by the Keister-Flammia Ladies Auxiliary, the Club has fostered the establishment and preservation of gardens throughout Dunnville, working hand-in-hand with the Memorial Library, the Athenaeum, the BonTempo Hospital, the Wetmore Town Pool, and the Horace Humpty Transfer Station, to name a few.

Our newest initiative will involve the beautification of the long-overlooked exterior grounds at the Dunnville-Esterhazy Medium Security Correctional Institution. This facility, locally known as the Dunnville prison, or the D-E, or “the can,” is located on the more rural northern side of town beyond Meatloaf Hill and the Puddle Pikes, and is therefore somewhat invisible to a majority of residents. Still, it is the largest employer in town, and receives many out-of-town visitors over the course of each month.

In terms of its appearance, the D-E deserves better. Its sheer walls, 25 feet tall and rather grim and severe, rise sharply from the surrounding lawns that, at most, receive the biweekly attentions of a groundskeeper bearing a weedwacker. Yet, along Asylum Road leading up to the site are striking, evenly-spaced plantings of linden trees that date to the early 20th century probably, so at least at some point some thought was given to making the property as attractive as possible, its serious purpose notwithstanding. We would now like to revive that zeal, that sense of mission, with the conviction that all public places deserve thoughtfully-designed gardens to enhance the overall environment and uplift the human spirit.

With the approval of the authorities, we will begin with site studies followed by soil preparation and the planting of classic, low-maintenance perennials such as daffodils, iris, gladiolus, hollyhocks, and daylilies. In time, beds of annuals will be developed, featuring marigolds, zinnias, sunflowers, snapdragons, and herbs, along with vegetables such as pumpkins, squash, and potatoes.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Email from Jackie Dezireaux to Myra Coin and Phyllis Pertl:

Jesus I don’t know about this thing that Betty’s come up with. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for making the grounds up there a little nicer, but really, the prison? Remember that nasty business from last year? What, was the sewage-treatment plant already taken? (Oh yeah, I guess it was. The Junior League ladies.)
     Did you ever drive by the prison? The walls are really high, solid gray concrete. And us with some little snapdragons down in front? Wouldn’t that be like, I don’t know, building sandcastles with a hurricane coming on? Do you know what the warden thinks about it? You know, the management, the superintendent, whatever.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Memo from Superintendent Blackwell Overshiner to Deputy Superintendent Evan Grilledcheese:

Evan, I’d like you to take this on. Seems harmless, good PR, make a nice photo in the paper. It might help people forget the incidents of the prior year. Do I need to elaborate, Evan? Get in touch with them ASAP. See what you can do without getting yourself in trouble. Bring out one or two of the puppets, have them be digging, weeding, moving mulch, fussing with the plants, what have you. Try not to mess this one up. Choose your puppets with care, or it’ll be both of our heads.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Statement from Carl Bugtussle to a reporter:

Sure, it’s nice to be on the outside. The people from the garden club, they seemed very nice. It was a nice day. There were armed men all around us, just out of reach of the cameras. I know what you want, and I’m going to give it to you. See, I like plants, flowers, squashes, tomatoes. I used to help my grandpa when I was a kid, he had a farm. We saved the seeds from everything, used them the next season. I got good at it. Is that the cornball story you want? Grandpa showed me how to transplant new tomatoes. You take off the two lowest branches and bury the plant up to where the branches used to be, rootball too. It makes for very strong roots.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Statement from Willie d’Zingo to a reporter:

I like it. From dust to dust, you know? I like getting my fingers in the dirt. I like the way it smells. I like forgetting that there’s a man over there and his finger’s on the trigger.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

News item:

DUNNVILLE – Local gardening enthusiasts are rolling out an ambitious program to spruce up the outside of the Dunnville-Esterhazy Prison. The ladies of the Dunnville Garden Club (and the one male member, Darius Ovenbird) will be focussing on formerly featureless areas of coarse grass at the base of the outer wall, to either side of the visitors’ entrance. “We totally support this beautification program and what it promises to do for the appearance of the facility,” Superintendent Blackwell Overshiner told the Dunnville Dispatch. “It’s a great collaborative effort and a splash of color here and there and a reminder that the world is a place of green growing things, many of them not weeds. And we appreciate the garden club thinking of us when they could have been planting petunias in the downtown traffic islands instead, and those funny-looking cocomat hangers around the fire station and the old five-and-dime, which is what they’d usually be doing.”
     Two convicts from the prison, Carl and Willie, have been selected to help the garden clubbers with their work. Both men have been using their time behind bars to read, study, and earn credits towards degrees from Schmelzer-Baudette Community College. Willie in particular reveals a broad knowledge of trends in contemporary literature from countries all over the world. “I don’t think so much about nations, you know? Nations come and nations go. I think about cultures instead, living cultures. You know, it’s a lot bigger world than you might think. It’s a lot bigger world than you might have any idea of.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Email from Myra Coin to her sister Delia:

I want to help these guys, I really do. So maybe it’s getting a little out of hand. We’re building such great gardens up there, we just keep turning over more and more of the grass and pushing out and away from the prison walls and starting new beds and the plants are just taking off like wildfire: cantaloupes, broccoli, cabbages, you name it. I think Mr. Grilledcheese is getting a little nervous but the PR has been so good. I heard the cable news station wants to send a crew up next week. It’s so involving!
     So. I went home last night and sat Jim down and talked with him about it and had a good sharing and told him just exactly how I’ve been feeling. NOT!!! Are you kidding me?? I can’t even tell him when the car’s on the fritz, he goes ballistic! So I’m keeping it all inside.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Phone call from Darius Ovenbird to his brother Dale:

Whose idea was it to have a couple of prisoners joining us out there? I mean, OK, they’re good at lifting the big bags of compost, but we didn’t really need any help . . . (inaudible) . . . What I’m saying is, we were supposed to be doing our gardening thing and now we’re doing, what? Rehab for these guys? Are they supposed to be taking over the work now? I’m not trained in that stuff. Seriously, Dale, no one tells me anything.
     No, I don’t know what they’re in for. Carl and Willie. Whoever. I don’t want to know. I didn’t sign up for that. I could be spending my time better if I went back to planting the traffic islands and the cocomat hangers, you know, which we’re really behind on by now. It takes us 25 minutes to get up there from town, 25 minutes to get back. That’s a hassle. That’s time.
     What? What beehives? No, I didn’t. What about the beehives?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

From www.blissfrombees.com:

What’s the buzz about beekeeping?
We know what you’re thinking: “Is beekeeping the right choice for me?” Adding a BlissFromBees beehive to your garden just might be the stroke of genius you’ve been waiting for! So liberating, the way those hard-working bees come and go, come and go, all the livelong day. And the honey is so sweet! For best results, order your starter kit today!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

News item:

DUNNVILLE – Authorities are still searching for two convicts who escaped yesterday from the Dunnville-Esterhazy prison complex while on a work detail at the new gardens outside the visitors’ entrance. There are unconfirmed reports that the men fled in the company of three female members of the Dunnville Garden Club, using a vehicle belonging to one of the women. A spokesperson for the prison administration declined to say how the two men effected their escape, stating only that the incident is under investigation. Reports that investigators found a quart of fresh honey in the locker of T. Bone Hartzell, the prison guard in charge of the work detail that day, are unconfirmed at this time.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

News item:

DUNNVILLE – Three members of the Dunnville Garden Club who assisted two convicts in their escape from a local prison last month have been apprehended by Minnesota state police. Acting on a tip from a clerk at a convenience store, troopers also detained the two prisoners after a brief car chase. It is believed that the five were on their way to Canada.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Excerpt from an informal address to garden club members by Dora Dalrymple, acting president:

I hope we can put this strange episode behind us now, don’t you? I’m reminded of the words of Dunnville’s famous first settler, Considerate Dunn, which are inscribed on a bronze plate attached to the Dunnville Stone at the town hall: “It’ll all be water over the dam just as soon as we get it built.” Going forward, I’d like us to keep that wise saying in mind.  

Carl and Willie were model prisoners, if I may say so, as well as talented and enthusiastic gardeners, as it turned out. I wish I could say the same for more people. I mean … well … you know. Being out in the fresh air and sunshine and digging in the dirt, watching the plants that you started from tiny seeds germinate and mature, every gardener knows the satisfaction that comes from that. And then, the bond that evidently formed between the prisoners and our garden clubbers. It wasn’t what people think, I know it wasn’t. It was the gardening that brought them together. Who knows what was going on in their minds. Who knows what they could have accomplished? But for now, they are going to have to mop up the wreckage back at home.

Myra and Jackie and Phyllis, each so different from the others, Phyllis a grandmother twice over. My oh my. These were my friends. Well, I guess they still are. Gardening can bring people together, we all know that. They just took it a step too far.

From what I understand, Willie and Carl are headed to a federal penitentiary, and they will be there a good long while. I feel bad for them. They should have known that you can’t … they should have known not to … well … anyway. I hope that they have pleasant memories of their gardening days at Dunnville-Esterhazy, memories that will help to sustain them in their … time to come.

In a way, we misled them. In a way, they misled us. It happens, even when your intentions are the best. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep trying. That’s what gardeners do. We get up early and put our boots on and grab a shovel and a hoe. We bring things to life and we bring things to fruition, and we get a little dirty along the way, sometimes a lot dirty.  

I understand that Phyllis, Jackie, and Myra will be getting relatively easy sentences, to be served at the Golightly correctional facility. I applaud that. We’d like them to be able to return to us as soon as possible, here at the sign of the Golden Trowel! In the meantime, it’s my understanding that they will be offered beneficial work experiences, both at the prison and in work-release programs, in the areas of commercial food preparation, dry cleaning, and horticulture.

Leviathan

[Composed in the style of a story told live for an audience, as on "The Moth."]

 

Hi, everybody. I’d like to talk to you about whales. How about it, anybody here like whales? Yeah, you like ‘em, and you, and you in the back there … really, who doesn’t like whales, almost nobody. I’m not a marine biologist, but I can tell you that there aren’t as many whales as there used to be, we gotta be careful with them, we don’t wanna make a big mistake and end up snuffing them out. They’re kind of like distant cousins of ours, you know? They used to walk around on dry land, imagine that. They’re warm-blooded, and they have these big brains, and they sing. They sing these crazy, beautiful songs, and no one’s completely sure what that’s all about. They’re not like fish, even though they live in the ocean. They’re not like sharks. I mean, no offense, but hardly anybody goes out on a shark watch. But people do go out on whale watches, in big numbers, very popular. Because it’s fun, and because you’re going to go way out to where the whales are. They can’t come to you, they’re too big to come in close to shore, so you get on a big boat with a bunch of other people, nice sunny day, it’s your first whale watch, very exciting, and you go waaaaaaaaaaaaay out to sea until you can’t see the land anymore, and the whales just show up and do their thing. Isn’t it great?

You watch them coming up for air, their big backs and their fins breaking the surface, and they spout, you know, they breathe in and out and it looks like a white cloud. It’s like something out of a fairy tale! Sometimes they wave their big tails like a flag, and sometimes they jump out of the water almost all the way, just for the fun of it, is what it looks like. We watch the whales and the whales watch us too, I think, very curious about us.

Fun times, going out to watch the whales. So some years ago, my girlfriend (now my wife … woo-hoo! yes! thank you!), she surprises me on my birthday with a pair of tickets to a … whale watch. Yes, you saw that coming, pretty sharp out here tonight.

So the first thing I noticed that morning when we pulled into the parking lot up in Gloucester was that the whale-watching boat was a lot … smaller than the one on that first trip I was telling you about. Actually, really, the first thing I noticed, before we even got down to the harbor, was that it was raining. Raining pretty hard, and chilly too. Very chilly for mid-May. Also, pretty breezy.

Our whale-watch boat was actually a party boat, in real life. There are lots of them up and down the shore, north and south of Boston. They’re designed to take large groups of people offshore for a gentle summer day of bottom-fishing and beer-drinking and getting your line tangled up with your buddies’ lines. That kind of stuff. Fair-weather fishing trips. Maybe it was a cheap rental this early in the year. How big was it? Oh, I don’t know, not too big. Maybe from here to over here in width. Little cabin, pilot house on top. And for length, well, if you stood at the stern and threw a stone towards the bow, it would probably go past the bow and land kerplop! somewhere out in front. Not too big.

There are maybe 35 people on board, many of them kids, and everybody seems really psyched to be going out to see the whales, except that it keeps raining, which is a … challenge. But a crew member I take to be the captain hollers to the rest of the crew, waving both arms forward: “Let’s just GO! Let’s just DO it!” And away we go, out of the harbor, out to the east where the action of the sea is … rougher.

So, you’re getting the picture, right? Small boat, choppy seas, wet weather. I begin to get the idea that things might not exactly work out the way I thought they would. So let’s get the rest of the negative stuff out of the way up front. People begin to get seasick all around us. Not a good time. A lot of them aren’t dressed for the weather, so they’re getting cold and drenched. There’s no more room in the cabin. I’m thinking, it’s actually better to be outside where you can watch the scenery. Nobody asks the crew to turn around. Folks seem to have decided just to endure it. Glassy eyes, pale faces, shivering. They’re holding on tight to whatever they’ve found that seems solid. What else can you do?  

Right about now you might be asking yourself, what kind of a story is this guy telling? Which version of the narrative is going to win out? Will it be the one featuring the trials and tribulations of the boat trip, where it’s cold and bumpy and wet? Or is it going to be something more … transformative? Something about how alive I feel, riding along on a little chip of steel and plywood on the limitless sea? That some discomforts need to be endured in order to get to that “alive” feeling? In short, is it going to be a happy story, or a sad one, or both? Well, I’m the storyteller, you’d think I would know. But sometimes the storyteller has to tell the story all the way through, to find out what kind of a story it is. So let’s see how that goes, you and me together.

So meanwhile the boat is powering through the waves, rolling to the left and right, hooo boy, and the bow is twitching from side to side like someone shaking their head, no-no. Also the bow is rising and falling, rising and falling, saying ah yes, ah yes, and sometimes a big wave catches the bow on the downstroke and seawater cascades down the deck and up our ankles. Hey captain, can we keep the ocean down there, where it belongs? I take a look over the side and notice how close the water is. We’re out of sight of land now. It’s just gray seawater all around, all chopped up into waves large and small, coming at us from every direction. If the boat should roll and we all go in, it’ll be over in minutes. No point spending any time worrying about that.

The guy I think is the captain comes by where we’re standing, on his way up to the pilot house. Hey captain, who’s upstairs driving the boat? And I say something to him like, Pretty rough out here today, and he turns to me as he grips the ladder, and his look is kind of wild-eyed and distracted. Stressed, you could say. Not exactly frightened, not exactly the Titanic, but still. He says to me, It’s a lot rougher than I thought it would be, too! Well, OK, good. That’s settled, then.

All of a sudden somebody shouts. The whales are here! They’re right here! Their black backs are rising out of the sea, all around us, very close, and as we slow down to pass by them and among them, I catch a glimpse of a long, mottled flipper down through the water. The boat loses its headway. Now we’re swinging skyward on the crest of each big wave, and falling into the trough behind it, up and down like a seesaw. The whales don’t care, they keep on feeding and snorting and spouting. We wipe the rainwater out of our eyes and strain to see, and to remember what we’re seeing. Look, there’s a big whale tale, against the sky! Or am I just remembering a picture I’ve seen in some tourist magazine? This goes on for a while. And then, in a moment, they’re gone, as if they were never here. Where did they go? The wind picks up, and now so does the engine. The captain is making an arc, bouncing around through the waves, turning around to get us out of there and headed for home.

A lot of that is the version of the story about how grueling it was. And for the first time I’m going to tell, I’m going to tell you, the version of the story about how great it was. Because that’s the way to get unstuck, and keep everything moving forward. Because it was. It was a pretty good trip! Yes it was too cold and yes too rough and yes people got sick all over the place, but look at it. Are you gonna let that stuff get to you? Would you let that stuff ruin a good story? Would I? Things are seldom flawless, in case you haven’t noticed. It’s all about what you choose to emphasize, and let’s just say that I choose to emphasize the following:

One. We saw the whales, many of them, and up close. That doesn’t always happen.
Two. I saw unforgettable scenery.
Three. We all went out and we all came back.
Four. I might be exaggerating how grim the weather was.
Five. We had taken Dramamine before boarding and it worked.
Six. We had brought along a stainless-steel dispenser holding a quart of hot coffee. The hot drink kept us from getting cold, and I remember sharing some with other passengers.
Seven. We had bundled up, dressing in layers as if for a cold-weather hike.
Eight. A short time after we turned back and beat it for Gloucester, the rain clouds moved away to the east and the sun came out and pretty soon it was a brilliantly clear, warm afternoon, and people who had been shivering and sick came out and sat on the deck and soaked up the sun, and began to be restored.

Yes? Yes. So, seeing as how everything worked out in the end, that should be a lesson to me, right? Just hang in, and everything will be OK.

Yes, except, you know, that’s the last whale watch I’ve been on. The fact is, I avoid putting myself in that kind of position — confined for a long time to a limited space, among strangers, no exit ramp, and at the mercy of forces I can’t control. I don’t like it. I don’t like to take those kinds of risks. Strong feelings! So I’ve missed out on a lot, very much so, and my life is less rich than it could be. I tend remember the bad. That’s as much me as the color of my eyes. I accept that.

But I also accept how right it feels to come through something and feel so alive afterwards, like a new person, a different version of myself. And I can see it coming, just as I can see the spires and headlands of Gloucester on the horizon ahead, rising out of the ocean as the boat heads for home. I can’t see all of the mainland yet, can’t see the harbor either, but I know it’s there, I accept that it’s there, and that it will be good.