View from the Pier

At times it may seem that there’s no escaping the fog of your negative thoughts,

yet at any time you can choose to be free.

Fill your spirit with true purpose,

and your best possibilities will come clearly into view.

 ~Ralph Marston

Nahant, Massachusetts

With the two of us heading straight toward each other, it would have been impossible to miss the man facing me on the path, but the conical straw hat perched on his head caught my attention. While in Asia that style of chapeau is a common sight atop the crowns of rice farmers and Buddhist monks, in the tiny New England island town of Nahant, Massachusetts, a glimpse of such headgear constitutes a phenomenon. 

I felt certain that when my eyes met those of its owner, I would behold a good-humored twinkle.  Alas, the upturned corners of my anticipatory smile abruptly fell when the stranger brushed by me, his mouth twisted into a scowl and eyes downward.  While our arms literally touched in passing, any connection ended there.  As the only inhabitants of an ocean-side path scarcely two feet wide, the lack of greeting was akin to a slap in the face.

“What a jerk!” I thought to myself.  A half-hour earlier, I had forced myself out the door and along the route of my daily constitutional, hoping the modest physical exertion and view of something other than the four walls of my study would shake off my dark mood.  Instead, I found myself dripping with condensation from the muggy morning and obsessing about the rudeness of the man in the hat. 

Despite having never seen the gentleman before in my life, his failure to acknowledge my existence fueled my fuming, and soon I found myself ruminating about how disconnected and isolated I felt living in this seaside community of 4,000 people.  With no grocery store, no gas station, and few services, even running basic errands required a drive that could take an hour round-trip, with summer traffic.  My strides grew longer and fiercer and I realized that salty tears were mixing with the sweat streaming from my brow.  Stomping up my front steps, I collapsed on my living room sofa and into a convulsion of wracking sobs.

I didn’t need a psychoanalyst or psychic to understand that the man in the hat was a physical manifestation for me of the loneliness I had been feeling.  He personified the view I had of myself as a voiceless mime behind a thick wall of plexi-glass, pounding on the surface seeking to be heard, yet seemingly invisible. 

I let go and luxuriated in my tears.   I cried with frustration for having heeded what I thought was a calling and then have things not turn out as I had hoped. I cried with abandon for the long, slow good-bye of a dying parent.  I cried for the dream I felt dissolving with my tears. I cried for the people who were not who I wished them to be. I cried for not being who I wanted to be. I cried for the accumulated angst of three-and-a-half years of working “home alone” after a 25-year career crammed with people.  Then, with a heartfelt snort and hiccup that can only occur at the conclusion of a good sob session, I raised my head from my hands. At my feet, looking up at me with concerned gazes, were my two cats.  Caught in a blatant act of being myself by two creatures whom I knew wouldn’t judge me, I laughed out loud.

The phone rang and it was a new acquaintance.  She told me she had never been to Nahant and expressed a desire to see the town; we made a date for a walk the next day.  When she arrived, she leapt out of her car, enthusing about the proximity of my house to the ocean.  She remarked on the musical sound of the buoys clanging in the breeze, a gentle noise that had become such a part of the background for me, I had long since failed to notice it. 

Walking down Emerald Road, she commented on the row of neat houses with tidy gardens; we were both charmed by a young boy in patriotic red, white and blue pajamas eating a bowl of strawberries on his front porch. We passed a woman lovingly applying a coat of varnish to one of the benches adorning the strip of grass above Tudor Beach; I noticed a brass plaque inscribed with “In Memory of Bernie and Jean. We will meet again.”  Further down Willow Road, past the town wharf, I said, “You have to check this out!” and opened a secret ivy-covered gate that led to a rocky beach from where we admired a spectacular view of the Boston skyline, sailboats bobbing in the foreground. 

Continuing around the bend, my new friend was enthralled with the Village Church, the oldest house of worship in Nahant, where Sunday services were held as early as 1820 in a small stone school-house. The first church was built in 1832 as a “summer church” for those from Boston who spent their summers in Nahant. Services were held from the first Sunday in July through Labor Day. Ministers from the Boston area came to preach, including Rev. Phillips Brooks, rector of Trinity Church in Boston and author of a favorite Christmas carol, “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” The Nahant Church was badly damaged in a storm in the 1850s and was replaced in 1868 by the Arts & Crafts-looking main sanctuary that is in use today.

We rounded another bend and I pointed out Northeastern University’s Marine Science Center, located a short distance from the former summer cottage of Harvard Professor Louis Agassiz, the founder of American marine biology in the mid-19th century. Agassiz was a pioneer in marine science education and promoted seaside laboratories where students could “Study nature, not books.”

From 1823 – 1859, the Nahant Hotel existed on the MSC property. This world-class hotel at the time had 300 rooms and a dining room that held 1000 people.  Nahant was a popular summer residence for many members of Harvard’s faculty, including Longfellow.  John E. Lodge and his wife Anna Cabot later purchased the property and two houses were built for their children, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and Elizabeth Cabot Lodge. 

In 1941 the site was used by the military for the construction of defensive fortifications for Boston Harbor, which consisted of a cannon bunker, plotting room and triangulation towers. A station to detect submarines was housed in two smaller bunkers near the tip of East Point. In 1954 a Nike missile launcher site was constructed along the southeast rocky coast of the point that is now Lodge Park. Northeastern University acquired the property in 1967. 

A short distance later, we stood atop Forty Steps Beach, a secluded cove encircled by the protective arm of a natural rocky outcropping.  Below, a couple had the beach to themselves.  The breath of fresh air that was my new friend said “You must come here all the time!” and I smiled and said “We used to.”

Coming almost full circle on our loop of Nahant, my friend and I reached Short Beach, a favorite of families with young children.  The shallow waters of the peaceful bay extend far out from the shore, with no deep waters or waves to worry about and the beach is always mobbed with sun worshippers.  I joked that I had witnessed the personification of optimism here a few days earlier, when I saw clans spread out on blankets and beach chairs in a dense morning fog, waiting for the rays of the rising sun to burn off the shroud of mist.

That night, my husband Tom and I ate supper on our deck and watched the sun glide down in the sky behind a lone lobster boat circling around its traps.  The craft sat on the glistening pearl-gray water, backlit by a slice of flaming orange sky below a bank of lavender clouds, the low rhythm of its diesel motor providing a hypnotic hum.

Having been a tourist in my own town for 24 hours, the next morning when I set off on my walk, my step was a little lighter and my view a little brighter.  On the porch of one of the houses along Emerald Road, I saw a lanky young man reciprocate a bear hug from his mother and then his sister, with a handshake from dad.  As the boy bounded down the stairs to get into the running car waiting for him, they called after him “Have fun, be careful!” It was a sweet scene and I wondered where the young man was off to, touched to see a teenager unabashedly engage in a familial display of affection, no apparent discomfort caused by the presence of his buddy in the driver’s seat. I thought of my own gangly brother, long gone now.  I felt his presence, and it was comforting rather than sad.

 Reaching Tudor Beach, I saw a familiar figure coming toward me, someone I think of as my friend.  We often walk at the same time and I find myself looking for him. He’s old, bald and often goes shirtless, with no apparent self-consciousness about his belly. He always has a wide, sunny smile and a gleam in his pale blue eyes.  Every time I see him he says “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?” I’m always surprised to realize he is waiting for my reply. “Yes,” I say.  “It is a beautiful day!”

Today, I can see that when my Eden begins looking evil, it is most often me that is out of balance.  Sometimes I need to give myself permission to mourn my losses and disappointments, to allow my Yankee stiff upper lip an occasional tremble.  And sometimes, it’s possible for me to have too much of a good thing.  Without balance and a sense of perspective, the things I cherish can become a cross to bear, what has been a sanctuary starts to seem a prison.  I can take for granted my little patch of paradise, and forget that in order for there to be light there must be shadows.