View from the Pier

Waiting for the fish to bite or waiting for the wind to fly a kite.
Or waiting around for Friday night or waiting perhaps for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil or a better break
or a string of pearls or a pair of pants or a wig with curls
or another chance.
Everyone is just waiting.
- Dr. Seuss, 1842-1910

St. Paul's Bay, Malta

This image was taken within hours after my arrival on Malta last April. These boats rested at the top of a ramp extending from the waters of the Mediterranean, and at the bottom of a set of white stone steps that led up to my hotel. The cross-section of crafts seemed to be patiently biding their time for perhaps a fresh coat of bottom paint, a fiberglass patch job or maybe some mechanical tinkering.

Their vibrant primary colors practically shouted a warm welcome to St. Paul’s Bay, here on the island’s northeast shore. Despite an almost 24-hour journey with a couple of pit stops on the way, I was invigorated by the pungent sea air and the sight of these sporty sentinels waiting for me. The painted “Eyes of Osiris,” a practice to ward off bad luck dating to the ancient Phoenicians, made the boats seem human; I visualized the cheerful crafts with cartoon mouths, telling me “If a scene this lively is at your door step, imagine what awaits! There is much to see– don’t waste a minute!”

So, after hurriedly checking in, I came back down those steps, headed down another flight of stairs carved out of the rocky coast, and began my exploration of the shoreline of San Pawl il-Baħar, as the town is known in Maltese. Practically next-door was the Church of St. Paul. According to the Bible, St. Paul was shipwrecked on Malta around 60 A.D. on his voyage from Caesarea to stand trial in Rome. He was warmly welcomed and remained for three months before continuing on to Rome, where he was sentenced to death. His layover on Malta left an enduring legacy—he is the island’s patron saint and there are now 365 churches here, where Roman Catholicism is the official State religion. A friend I made while visiting jokingly told me “Call out ‘Paul’ on any street and all the men will turn around to answer you.”

Days later, when my adventures took me a bit further north, I came across a bequest of a more secular sort –Popeye Village, a cluster of ramshackle wooden buildings located at Anchor Bay, built as a film set for the 1980 film Popeye. Starring Robin Williams, the movie is based on the E.C. Segar comic strips and set in the fictional town of Sweethaven, where the sailor Popeye comes to find his long-lost father. Today it is open to the public as a family entertainment complex. While the setting atop cliffs high above an aquamarine sea was spectacular, I didn’t quite get the attraction of a museum to the make-believe in a land rich with an authentic ancient heritage — one that encompasses megalithic temples.

I almost hadn’t made this voyage. My mother had been diagnosed a year earlier with lung cancer and she had just emerged from a month-long stay in the hospital combating a particularly persistent infection. While a tenacious fighter, it was very unclear how much strength she had left. I am a fish out of water when faced with uncertainty or inaction and did quite a bit of flailing and flopping around about whether or not I should make this long-planned trip.

In the film festival that is my mind, several mental movies with very different plot lines and endings were competing. Unlike Cannes, however, the entries seemed limited to the genres of melodrama, tragedy, and horror; somehow light comedy hadn’t made the cut. All the “what if” scenarios that were playing themselves out in Technicolor and Hi Def had me cast in a starring role in my own personal “Every Which Way But Loose.” In short, I was spending a lot of time in the always unforeseeable future and, as a result of getting so far ahead of myself, was uptight and paralyzed.

Dr. Seuss could be called the antithesis of uptight. Theodor Seuss Geisel was a native of the city I was born in, Springfield, Massachusetts. He attended Dartmouth College, where he joined the staff of the campus humor magazine. Reportedly, Geisel was caught drinking gin with friends in his room, violating national Prohibition laws of the time. As a result, the school handed him a prohibition of his own and he was forbidden to participate in non-academic pursuits. To get around this and continue contributing to the magazine, he began using the byline “Seuss.”

Despite a life devoted to writing children’s books, Geisel never had any kids of his own. He reportedly would say when asked about this, “You have ‘em; I’ll entertain ‘em.” Geisel made a point of not starting his stories with a moral in mind, stating that “kids can see a moral coming a mile off.” Nonetheless, he also said “there’s an inherent moral in any story.”

And so there is in mine, too.

Mom turned 78 yesterday, very happily ensconced in an assisted living facility, a move she resisted ferociously for quite some time, reluctant to leave her own home. When I called with birthday well wishes, she told me in complete earnestness that she had resumed pilates class and looks 30 years old. She said her realtor had held an open house over the weekend and there had been a bite; she felt sure a buyer would come along.

My husband Tom and I recently attended a Maltese holiday party held by the country’s vice consul, located here in the Boston area. We were invited as a result of a story I had written about the Maltese islands for The Boston Globe. We thoroughly enjoyed our hostess Christine’s hospitality, and meeting many of her fellow Maltese ex-pats—an opportunity I would not have had if I had chosen to wait to make that trip.

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For more Malta images, see Travel Photos.

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