“Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.” Jane Howard, Families
We are rapidly approaching holiday family gathering times. They are, as we all have experienced, a blessing, but a blessing with its complications.
Growing up in a small town, the older kids went to Midnight Mass and sang those nostalgic and beautiful familiar carols. We all knew the first verse and most knew the second; after that it was hit or miss. My father used to solo at Midnight Mass in his perfect tenor after a quick shot of Jack Daniels or Southern Comfort at our house to ‘loosen the pipes.’ “Oh, Holy Night” or “Panis Angelicus” at Communion.
Any resistance to going to bed after Mass was dealt with by telling us Santa just doesn’t come to houses where anyone is awake. In the morning there was a barely past sun rise gift opening frenzy with bleary eyed parents who had wrapped gifts until an hour before the kids got up. Next came a quick and unfancy breakfast, some magic time to play with new toys and tally them on the floor of our shared bedrooms. Define the borders of each kid’s stash. I slept in a room with three brothers. One single bed and a bunkbed. It never felt crowded.
The Christmas rituals continued with a turkey dinner for which my father had sacrificed the rest of what little Christmas Eve sleep was available. After he dropped into a quick nap nodding off in his chair, he and my mother would round us up each carrying a new favorite toy. We would pile into the station wagon unstrapped and boisterous, then head over a few miles to Uncle Timmy and Aunt Julia’s Federalist style two story house in an older neighborhood for a casual supper and the annual gathering with our menagerie of uncles, aunts, and cousins. To be more accurate, Timmy and Julia were our great uncle and aunt, Julia was one of two surviving sisters of my mother’s mother, the late Mary Ann (Molly) Laracy, ne Manley. The furniture was solid wood with elaborately carved legs, heavily upholstered in a dark floral pattern, well maintained with arm covers on the chairs, and not much of it was comfortable.
Timmy was genial, slightly flushed, quietly observant, and quintessentially Irish with a knowing eye and a ready quip. He was tall with huge hands and prominent knuckles. He sat at the head of the dining room table while the kids ran carefully amuck. We loved him and his humor. He was also the town chief of police, and as we learned years later he was universally feared by potential malefactors as in ‘don’t ever mess with Timmy Cullinane.’ For his grand nephews and nieces though, he was benign Uncle Timmy, and we felt safe and welcomed in his home. Julia was gracious, kind, with a calming smile, and supplied her loving hospitality without pretense or expectation. Their only child, Marie, taught at the Boston College School of Nursing for many years. Marie baby sat for us once or twice in a pinch when she was still in school, and I confess I had a crush on her soft voice and warm, smoky laughter. Like most of my cousins, she called me Jackie, a name I’ve rarely heard since.
While the adults savored the buffet, drained the spiked punch, and relaxed in mirth and conversation in the formal dining and living rooms, the cousins lived their own version of Christmas in the rest of the house, avoiding being underfoot and annoying the grown-ups. Four of us were born in 1946 of the four Laracy sisters and their husbands recently back from the war. Later came more cousins, including my five siblings. The older cousins would retreat to the back stairway off the kitchen and play school, a game devised and supervised by my cousin Mary. Always supervised and taught by Mary because, well, because she was Mary. She eventually did enjoy a successful career as a teacher in public schools. I do not believe she could use the stairs for her students there, but I wouldn’t put it past her.
The game went like this. The pupils all started bunched up on the bottom step. Mary asked us in turn a question, usually history or science, and the answers she was looking for were determinative. Any arguments disputing wrong answers were not just discouraged; they were futile. Each correct answer allowed the pupil to scoot up one step. There was crowding and jostling and an occasional elbow. Each wrong answer dropped us down a step, but you could not descend lower than the floor, so there was only so far to fall. Mary would often seem slightly more pleased with a smug smile when demoting us than she was gratified to give us a promotion to a higher level, but that just might be my faulty memory. I can’t ever remember a winner. The game went on until we gave up with numb legs and found the next entertainment or a loud complaint escalated until an aunt came over and broke up the class.
“The village policeman always seemed to be about. He knew the foibles of the whole countryside and trod softly, seldom needing to do more than quietly suggest.” James Herriot, “All Creatures Great and Small”
One of Uncle Timmy’s most reliable cops was Wally. Always squared away, big hands, Billy club hung at his belt. Salt and pepper hair, tall, and perhaps ten pounds over his ideal weight by today’s standards, but he carried it well. He frequently played volleyball with the adult men evening league in the high school gym. Knew everyone in our community, or at least all the families. We lived in a growing municipality run by elected selectmen, and we were in transition from a small mill town that still had some factory housing to a larger bedroom commuter hub halfway on the rail line from Providence to Boston.
And everyone knew Wally. Trusted him. The kind of policeman you called when you needed help. The kind of policeman who showed up when you needed help. Rumor had it that, like Uncle Timmy, as friendly as his preferred manner was, Wally was not to be trifled with. An aggressive belligerent drunk would likely need first aid before they locked him up for the night. A particularly troublesome one who hit a woman might require stiches in the emergency room. No one was shot or damaged permanently, but consequences were administered swiftly, and such rough justice was painful and unlikely to be forgotten.
Wally did not wear a balaclava to mask his identity from his fellow townspeople. He was not afraid to be identified or worried about reprisals or ashamed of what he did. I’m not sure if law enforcement that needs to mask up to go to work says more about the cops or about the rest of us. However, masked agents of the law do not strike me as a societal improvement from guys like Wally.
Wally’s main claim to local legend was as a crossing guard for the school before and after classes. He especially enjoyed the elementary school crossing three blocks from the town hall and the old police station. In days of yore, law enforcement sergeants and below did not consider it beneath them to spend a half hour of their shift helping kids safely navigate crossing one of the more heavily traveled streets: Main Street, Common Street, Stone Street, School Street. Even the names evoke clear and pleasant memories for me. A policeman’s job was to keep the town safe for the residents, and kids crossing busy streets were in their care.
Our Wally was special though. His big grin would flash as he recognized his regulars, calling them out by name. His signature move, if they wanted, was to grab their wrists both gently and securely and spin rapidly around. Sadly today, that would probably cost him his job. But for the kids in the nineteen fifties, although it was thrilling and felt a little risky, his strength was unmistakable, and no one was ever afraid. We were flying.
We’d run to him and cry out, “Swing me, Wally!” And he would make us soar.
“Most street cops are honest men doing a hard job. The good ones know their streets like family.” Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
Rita and I started volunteering at the Sachuest Point National Wildlife Refuge in February this past year, mostly in the Visitor Center. During a typical shift between fifty and a hundred visitors will come into the center to ask questions, look for directions, cruise our little shop of nature books, clothing, and art, browse the well-designed exhibits while their children try to complete the scavenger hunt identifying the various animals and birds, get a drink of water, or use the restrooms. The rangers estimate they represent about a quarter of the total visitors walking the two and half miles of trails. It’s a busy place, but it rarely feels crowded.
government employees is somehow not up to the standard of private employees. The rangers we’ve had the honor to meet are dedicated, smart, knowledgeable about wildlife – both flora and fauna, friendly, sensitive to visitor needs, diligent about protecting all things wild, and work hard and long. They don’t direct from afar; when plantings are needed to recover and protect erosion areas, they are on their knees with dirt on their hands. Understaffed, they rely heavily on volunteers to help with building and trail maintenance. They have a mission, and willingly fulfill it with dedication and no small measure of joy in their calling.
Most of the questions we field are prosaic. “Do you have a trail map?” Yes. This is how you orient it to the visitor center. Ocean View is a bit longer, but more open to the sea out by the point. Harbor seals have been seen there. “Can I fish off the rocks for stripers?” Yes. In season and with a license you can get online. “I heard there is a scavenger hunt questionnaire for kids?” There is, and we have stickers for them when they attempt it. “How much do I owe for parking here?” A hundred bucks, cash, is my usual answer, but no one ever believes me or pays. It is open and free to all. “Where are the bathrooms?” For the guys, there is a very big one out back in the woods. Rita gives me ‘the look’ when I say that. Or you can use the ones right behind you that have a flush. “Can you tell me what this bird (or bug or snake or shellfish or snail or flowering shrub or vine) is on my phone camera or as I describe it?” Sometimes we can. Other times we need to consult the many books on our wildlife shelf. It’s enjoyable to search and learn with them. “What is that animal we saw that looks like a weasel?” Probably a mink. “I saw a pair of pheasants (with great enthusiasm)!” Yes. They are very beautiful. “Does anything eat the deer here?” We have a good herd of about forty here. Please don’t feed them. Sometimes coyotes get a small or a weakened one. And sometimes the velociraptors get one. (That may get “the look” again from Rita, but kids like my answer. Wide eyed, they laugh.)
Like other venues that welcome all comers, Sachuest has regulars who become known and comfortable with the place: men, women, and children who walk the trails weekly or daily. Most are folks like us who have come to love the varying moods and seasons of the trails and walk them year round. We never tire of hundreds of migrating songbirds that come and go, raptors, waterfowl, insects, snails, and flowering plants. We recognize the regular hikers from the trails, and they recognize us. They are invariably friendly and smile easily almost without exception. I have yet to meet a cranky person there – either because the environment eases their angst or because it tends to attract people who don’t carry a lot of it anyway.
One regular visitor lives in an assisted living and only gets out when her friend (platonic) drives an hour over a couple of bridges to pick her up and bring her to the center after their AA meeting. They come almost every week, sit for a while on the benches outside and chat quietly, enjoying some people watching, and taking in the view of Sachuest Beach with the spires of St. George School on the southern end along with distant views of the Bellevue Avenue mansions across the bay. Oftentimes they come in for a visit and sit in the chairs by the visitor desk to bring us into the conversation. He is a pleasant sort of absent minded fellow who is a retired bus driver, gentle and unassuming without pretensions. She has a couple of black belts in two martial arts, which apparently were helpful in her old job as a bartender and occasional bouncer. Her life remains difficult and now is physically challenging. They seem an unlikely pair but clearly benefit from discovered kinship and support. He lifts her up with quiet small acts of kindness.
A couple of weeks ago, the general became specific, as cultural changes will do. Rita and I travel seven minutes west to Burma Road and the Weaver Cove Boat Landing on Narragansett Bay often at sunset. A large dock extends out towards Prudence Island, and in the summer it’s busy with boats coming and going – dropping and picking up passengers from the many small craft that launch and return there. Several boats are moored offshore and kept there for the boating season from May to October.
February is that sort of month. We’ve transited from the early bright lights and joy of the beginning of a New England deep winter in December to a grayer, resigned wait. The chores of winter are wearing and tiresome. The dust and mess on the floor from the woodstove are grinding me down; every evening ends with banking up a load of oak and maple for the night burn, and every morning starts around five with a few coals blown back to life with small wood and a hot start to keep the creosote buildup in the chimney to a minimum.
Late winter skies are startling blue, and the clouds look like they were painted with a pallet knife, almost unnatural. The sun is two months warmer than December, and with the windows up in the car the glare feels hot against our face. Hope is upon us, the promise of March and April unmistakable. Soon and very soon, the cascade of blooming will begin. First the crocuses, then the yellow profusion of daffodils and forsythia, followed by everything, the pink cherry blossoms, the white of the Bradford pears, magnolias, dogwoods, flowering crabs, azaleas, later the lilacs and rhododendron. The island’s splendor is persistent for months almost into autumn with the Montauk daisies.
Italian in four and a half centuries, the Politburo started to understand fully the worst mistake of its sixty-year history of brutal rule. When he was elected Pope, he immediately announced that “the Church of Eastern Europe was no longer a Church of silence because now it speaks with my voice.”
Quo Vadis Blog 