Coast2Coast

Our life on this island is much like life if we had settled in one of those small towns where one main street constitutes the town center. We adopt the ways of the all-year-rounders, dressing in sweatshirts with the logo of a black dog as its only decoration or delineation. Our city ways gets checked, like baggage, at the ferry in Woods Hole. We slow down once the ferry docks, adjusting to life where a unique clock seems to dictate time. It is the place where we are told we can’t receive mail since our mail carrier has too many stops, therefore, we must wait till her route gets cut in half before letters or packages will be delivered to us.

The idiosyncrasies of this place can seem maddening, but is, for some odd reason, tolerated by us, fast-paced city people. References for help, whether it is a gardener, plumber, or contractor, is followed by cautious words that these names are the ones who will likely show, as if most of the others in the phone book will deign to come, all of it dependent on the way the sea breeze will blow that particular day.

But after so many years of coming to this place, we are used to the ways of this island. Nothing confounds us like it did in the beginning. Even the news that we are not able to receive mail, just yet, is met with a certain equanimity by me, a dramatic difference from the reaction I would surely have had to such news in New York City. The calm of this place highlights how irrational we get about so many of the inconsequential aspects to our every day life. How time, the most precious commodity anywhere else in the world, seems to stretch and lengthen here.

So, as we wait for another person, whose skills designates them as expert in whatever field, we know the hour promised may come and go. But that at some point, their truck will make their way down our gravel drive.