“Always marry a girl from Texas; no matter what happens, she’s seen worse.” I first heard this from Pete Seeger during his concert at Symphony Hall in Boston in the late sixties.
The latest generation of fear filled waders with their water shoes and 50 SPF might well miss their big chance. Sometimes you just jump into the wave and ride it out. We married way too young at twenty and fifty-seven years later we’re still trying to work things out. According to current standards we did everything wrong. No pre-nup, no separate accounts – bills paid in cash out of envelopes without one for savings, no student debt because we were paying as we went with tuition paid from my summer tree climbing job. Rita was working as a registered nurse while I finished school. All in. One old beat-up car we shared with no payments, third story walk up railroad apartment, no savings account, nothing held back, in love and glad of it. She wasn’t from Texas, although I’ve known some strong women from Texas, so I’m pretty sure the quote above is true. No, Rita was a nurse, and the saying applies: Always marry a nurse because no matter what happens, she’s seen worse.
We had no carefully planned house carefully furnished, or even a budget outside of hastily scribbled categories and weekly amounts on the envelopes, and no plan for every contingency we could worry about. Twenty-five bucks a week into the “Rent” envelope. Ten into “Food.” Five into “Electric” Five into “Phone.” Five into “Entertainment,” which was spent for an occasional movie downtown or an impulse trip to the State Street Fruit Store for a fifty-cent hot fudge sundae. Sometimes when the urge struck after we went to bed, I was sent out to bring a couple of them home – whip cream, nuts, and a cherry included. Everything cost much less, and wages as always barely kept ahead of them.
Our one extravagance was the KLH stereo and turntable we bought with our wedding money. Vinyl. Eclectic. From Van Cliburn’s Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto to Bob Dylan and Joan Baez to Dave Brubeck, Doc Watson, and Mozart. Stupid happy. Lots of hugs. Lots of cuddles. Still a lot of hugs and cuddles, sleeping like spoons. Some hard times later. Mistakes and some heartaches. And good times. Many more good times. Some challenging waves; some thrilling ones too. Very few regrets. Wouldn’t change a thing.
The first summer after we were married at Blessed Sacrament Church, which is where we both had our First Communions, the Red Sox won their first pennant in twenty-one years. The time before that was in 1946 when Ted Williams returned to Fenway from WWII. Before that it was two years after my father was born in 1918 when they traded away the Babe. No series win for another 34 years after that pennant. My father, a lifelong fan, never saw a series win. But he and my mother were visiting us in Northampton when they clinched the pennant in 1967. Yaz. Rico Petrocelli. Reggie Smith. Jim Lonborg. Tony C. George Scott.
Everyone came out of their houses. All the church bells in town were ringing in jubilation. Rita climbed up on my shoulders, and I started to sprint down the sidewalk dodging the crowd like a running back. She pulled my hair to stop and started to laugh. Laughing so hard she wet her pants and warmed my neck. Got angry at me for the wet pants. I loved her so.
Ah yes, All in. Jump in the wave with some good timing and the ride is exhilarating. From a distance, the observer doesn’t perceive very rapid motion, but inside the break is very different. The sound of the surf and the rush of the water in your ears, the power of the thing. You’re flying, carried along by a surge of energy that built up for a hundred miles, then breaks when gravity overcomes speed, and the shore slopes shallow. Some rough rides, some smooth, occasional misses and the wave passes over you. But, God, jump in. Hesitate when the right wave comes, and you will never see another one like it. There is no substitute.
“Sing me a melody,
Sing me a blues
Walk through the bottomland without no shoes
The Brazos she’s running scared
She heard the news
Walk through the bottomland without no shoes
Won’t you walk through the bottomland without no shoes?” Lyle Lovett[i]
We rode many waves over the years. Some tested us sorely. One memorable ride was in 1983, the year after our third child was born in April and my father died on his birthday in December. We learned once again what it was like to ride a wave that was an invitation from God.
We visited a Catholic community while at a conference during the winter in Providence, Rhode Island and met some folks who later would become close friends. We sensed a strong sense of belonging, but we already had that in Maine and could have stayed for the rest of our lives.
In the spring of 1983, all our little family – Rita and I with the three kids (only Meg who wasn’t born yet was missing) went on a four-day Easter retreat in Augusta when we were living in Maine. We had felt a prompting of the Holy Spirit to move back closer to our parents who were aging: my recently widowed mother and both of Rita’s folks. And perhaps a call to dive into a wave carrying us into deeper waters in our faith. We loved small town Maine, our parish, my job; I resisted. But in the prayer journal I kept each morning, the readings kept coming. About caring for parents. About God gathering His people. About journeys of faith. Give me a break, Lord. I like it here!
Finally, after much hesitation, on Holy Saturday, I managed to meet with the retreat director, Father Bourque (no relation to the Boston Bruin All Star defenseman.) We talked for a half hour around eleven o’clock after everyone was in bed. He had a pronounced French-Canadian accent. I showed him my journal, hoping that he would tell me to get real and stop making myself crazy. The job market was terrible, we were just coming out of a recession, and the real estate market was worse. Houses in our county were lingering for up to a year until the sellers got tired and cut their prices severely. He looked at me with startlingly deep blue eyes and said, “I think God wants you to move.” My heart started pounding. Not my plan.
He suggested that since moving a few hundred miles with my family to uncertain places in uncertain times was serious business, I should do some testing to make sure of our discernment. Ah, I thought. A good out. But his test turned out to be not trivial. Father Bourque looked at me again, “Since times are hard, test the waters for a job down there, and if that looks promising, put your house on the market.” How about something a little safer like a wet fleece[ii], Father? This test is a commitment to the wave before it breaks. “Look for the job, sell the house,” he said.
We do understand that we don’t always understand; responding and traveling in the Will of God is always in the end faith in the unknown trail, and there are brambles, stumbling stones, and blind corners. On our return Monday, I called my boss in Boston. I was on the road selling commercial projects for a large regional lumber company, making Boston wages, but in a much less expensive cost of living situation in rural Maine. Life was settled and going well. But the invitation and wave were calling. Since I was in good standing in the company, the most comfortable testing of the job waters was calling the office. “Warren,” I said, “Just thinking of maybe exploring a larger market. What have you got in say, Southeastern Mass, or Rhode Island or even Cape Cod?” “I like what you are doing in Maine,” he said, “but if you need to make a change, I’d love to have you in Rhode Island. I just fired the guy there on Friday.” I remembered what a skilled veteran told me once: don’t bother to learn their names until they’ve been here at least a year. It’s a tough business.
Be still my heart. That’s one of Father’s discernment keys, but houses stay on the market here for a long, long time. We’re still safe. I called a friend who was a real estate agent in town. Ed was my tennis buddy and not encouraging about us moving, but he said he would put a satisfactory price on it from a seller’s perspective and list it if I insisted and had lots of patience. I did insist and would be happy if my patience was infinite. We had a full price offer in five days. The wave was breaking and moving much too fast for comfort.
When we made a second visit to confirm the community, we were invited to stay with a family who would soon become dear friends we love to this day. On a walk in the neighborhood with the baby, five houses down the street, we came upon a realtor nailing up a “For Sale” sign on a less than thriving street Norway maple tree. The owner had died two weeks before, and his sister who now owned the house was selling it quite a bit below market because, while solid and well built, it was sixty years old and needed major updating – needed a new kitchen, a new bathroom, refinishing the oak floors, painting all the walls, rewiring and replumbing. But the roof was good, the furnace sound, the full Douglas fir two by four framing superlative. Made an offer. Accepted in a day. Done deal.
Easter retreat. By Pentecost we were living in Providence with a lot of work to do. That’s what body surfing can be like. The rush of power is beyond your ability to control. Moving faster than you thought you could. Twenty yards closer to the beach in five seconds.
That’s what body surfing with God can be like.
One more recent short body surfing story that ties back to the opening quote from Pete Seeger about girls from Texas (and nurses). Earlier this year, I was body surfing at Surfer’s End on Sachuest Beach (See picture from my cell phone). At 77, Rita was reading a book and sort of keeping an eye on me. She was skeptical that body surfing was the best use of my time at our age.
The key to body surfing is timing. It’s all timing. Hit the wave just as it breaks, and you can go a long way. Jump into it too early, and it passes you by. Too late, and it breaks ahead, rapidly fizzling out in front of you while you turn to wait for the next one. Thrashing and frantic swimming to catch up is useless. There are other possible outcomes. Lose sufficient attention and the wave smashes your face into the sand. Forehead scrapes that look like someone touched up your forehead with a belt sander loaded with a 24-grit belt. They can bleed profusely but without any real lasting injury other than cosmetics. I bled. Came up out of the water. Good thing there were no sharks about. Waded toward shore splashing the cleansing and cooling salt water on my head. Blood running down my face.
Rita glances up and looking concerned walks down to the water. “Always marry a nurse because no matter what happens, she’s seen worse.” It’ll all be OK now. My nurse will assess the damage. Her face goes from concern to something else. I am starting to worry about spending the evening in the emergency room. She struggles to control her emotions. She tried to resist; she really did. Then she bursts into laughter. “I told you, dummy.”
“To me, when you go body surfing, it’s a way of simplifying everything. It’s just you and the wave and the experience. Life is a balancing act.” Mike Steward, champion body surfer. From a Surfer Today article.
[i] Superb video with the incomparable Emmy Lou Harris providing in the harmony. Walk Through the Bottomland
[ii] See Judges 6:33-40 in which Gideon tests God’s promise of victory over overwhelming enemy forces by laying out a fleece for dew.
The red pumper bounced onto the driveway of the large ante bellum colonial with siren blaring. The house had once served as an inn, and currently was occupied by a half dozen mostly benign refugees from other late sixties communes. The flames fully engaged the structure and were seen through the windows. Everyone got out.
A “domestic disturbance” was treated like this: no police involvement because they were too far away to help. Bia, a recent resident, had moved into an apartment next to a small store front downtown, where she opened up a sheet metal artisan shop, welding and cutting small decorative pieces sold at craft fairs. Her boyfriend was an odd, slender, bearded, pony tailed archetype prone to buckskin jackets, cowboy hats, silver buckles and a 14” Bowie knife carried in a sheath on his belt. Bia’s daughter was my daughter’s age, and they became friends during the few months since Bia arrived in town. In January, our phone rang about eleven one weeknight, long after our bedtime. She called because we were one of the few she had gotten to know. The boyfriend, whose name fades, let’s call him Jim, was drinking, smoking dope and hitting her. Could I come down to help? Sure, I agreed, groggily.
steed, well actually, an F150. What could be better for a chainsaw guy than getting to play knight errant? On the way to her place, I practiced some tough threat lines involving emergency rooms, reconstructive dentistry and eating through a straw, all of which turned out quickly to be completely inadequate to the situation. The denouement was less than noteworthy. Jim had fled out the back door on the snow over the ice of Lake Minnehonk. I followed his tracks into the dark, axe handle in hand, and found him seventy yards out on the ice in a tee shirt disconsolately sitting and shivering in the snow, his knife still in its sheath. I asked him if he had a place to go. He said he did, in Waterville. I told him that’s where he would be staying. He started to cry. Bia packed a duffle bag into his dented Saab with Boulder County Colorado plates, and that was the last anyone ever saw of him. I went home to bed; Rita was glad to see me.
In the beginning, there were snowball fights after every storm, even though they presently are illegal in eight towns in Rhode Island, including nearby Newport and Jamestown. Not illegal here in Portsmouth, however, our town has a long history of dissent and rebellion against unjust laws and was founded in 1638 by Anne Hutchinson and others who wanted freedom from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Portsmouth was the site of the largest Revolutionary War
A rainy December Saturday is the perfect time for reflection and to get a short Christmas letter together. We said last goodbyes to some good friends in 2021, three in the last two months. We’ll miss their company and just knowing they are there. We’ve joined in prayer for each that they have been welcomed home. “Well done, My good and faithful servant.” Each one was unique and precious and unrepeatable and irreplaceable. As we turn the corner into our fourth quarter century, this Christmas and end of year season, natural for reflection, has special poignancy.
A local townsperson from forty or so years ago in Mount Vernon, Maine, taught in the English Department at the University of Maine. She grumbled to us once at one of her parties that the brilliant fall gold and red display of maples and birch and poplar was disturbingly garish, a vulgar excess that lures the tourists. The leaf peepers travel by the busload to northern New England and upstate New York each year to gawk and to raise the rates in the hotels and restaurants, filling the hospitality business gaps between the summer lakes splendor and the ski season. The leaf colors are enabled by the slow final ruin of the chlorophyll 
It has been written that the Holy Spirit is the Love proceeding from the Father and the Son within the Community of Love that is the Trinity of the Godhead. One of the key stories in the Christmas narratives occurs when Mary comes to help her also pregnant cousin after Mary began carrying the Christ child within her. In the presence of the baby Jesus, Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit; she was participating in the mysterious inner life of God. Human beings as their most noble calling possess the capacity to share in that inner life.
None of us likely has the same degree or skill or eye, but the capacity for beauty exists by our nature. Imago Dei, in the Image of God, are undeserved gifts to us in our nature and our souls. The senses are there; the mind is there; the heart is there; the soul is there for all of us.
“One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.” Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
How many of our stories start with “I met a guy?” Just as this one will. We were in the backyard of my daughter’s home in California earlier this spring during a birthday block party and cookout in the cul-de-sac out front for a neighbor turning ninety. One of their neighbors drifted in to see some of the yard improvements completed to adapt to the needs of two small active girls during a pandemic. Rodney’s daughter came as well, and the three girls ran helter-skelter testing the limits of swings, water tables, trapezes, trampolines, and slides. While the children joyfully yelped and played, we became acquainted in the way strangers sometimes do in unplanned encounters.
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