Category Archives: Meditations

Spring watch

Monday:– The weather forecast had predicted a few snow flurries on Monday evening. Sure enough, as I went in to the district Board meeting over in Middleboro at 6:45, a few fat flakes floated down from the sky. But by the time I walked out of the Board meeting two hours later everything was covered with four inches of snow — that’s a little more than a flurry.

Tuesday and Wednesday:– It felt warm when the sun was out. But when the sun wasn’t out, and when the wind was blowing off the 35 degree ocean water, it felt like winter again.

Thursday:– The gulls are starting to get more active. I suppose they are starting to pair off for breeding season. I’ve been hearing them screaming at each other all evening long, and every once in a while it sounds like one gull throws another one down onto our roof from the building next door.

Spring watch

The incredibly warm weather this week still hasn’t melted all the ice in Cambridge — we still have to walk over a thick slab of ice when we go out the back door of the house where we’re cat-sitting. But most of the ice is gone, and I saw big fuzzy catkins on a pussywillow tree over by Alewife Brook this afternoon.

I was at work most of the day, only getting outside during lunch hour. I didn’t even manage my usual walk. When I finally left the office at 6:30, I walked out to my car to find big snowflakes dotting its roof. At first, I thought someone had thrown something on my car. I couldn’t believe it was snow — the sun was out at lunch time, how could it have snowed? — and I had to touch one of the flakes, to have one of the huge flakes melt under my fingertip and feel the wetness of it, before I believed that it had snowed. I wanted to have seen the snow flurry, big wet flakes drifting lazily down from dark clouds, but I had been inside. I don’t think I’m meant to be inside most of the day. Our ancestors evolved outdoors, and evolution has not designed us to spend all day inside, staring at computer screens, talking on phones, attending meetings. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t feel any need to be outdoors all the time — I worked as a carpenter for five years, and I worked out in the yard at a lumber yard for a year and a half, and there are many days when it is much better to be indoors. But there has to be a middle ground, some way to get more than one short hour a day outdoors.

Spring watch

Yesterday, the last day of February, I walked over to Fort Phoenix state beach. It’s a 45 minute walk, and once I got there I didn’t walk out on the hurricane barrier to look at the harbor, and I completely ignored the beach itself. I walked all the way to the far end of the park where the Red-winged Blackbirds like to congregate. Suddenly I heard one, the familiar “konk-a-reeee!” By the time I got to the boundary of the park, I could hear dozens of them. I couldn’t see them, and I didn’t want to walk through the yards of the private houses where I knew they were roosting. But it was good enough for now just to hear them, a sure sign of spring.

February

February is my least favorite month. Even when we’ve had a relatively easy winter, as we have this year, by February I’ve had enough — had enough cold, had enough darkness, had enough snow and freezing rain and miserable weather.

Years ago, I remember talking with housemates about which months were our favorites. Joel liked one of the summer months, I forget which one. I said I liked November best, because the mosquitoes are gone and as long as the snow held off it’s the best month for hiking. Sue said her favorite month was February.

“February?” said Joel and I incredulously. February was one of the worst months of the year, said Joel. The only good thing about February, I said, was that it only lasted twenty-eight days. But Sue said she liked February because by February you can really tell that the days are getting longer, and she also loved those clear blue days you sometimes get.

Joel and I realized that Sue’s birthday was in February — no wonder it was her favorite month. Then Sue pointed out that Joel’s favorite month happened to be the month in which he was born, and of course I was born in November. So we decided that our favorite months were our favorites simply because those were the months in which we were born.

Ever since Sue told us that this is her favorite month, at least I’ve been able to appreciate that by February you can really tell that the days are growing rapidly longer — and when we do get a clear day in February, I can look up and appreciate the deep blue of the sky.

And I’m cranky and irritable and ready for spring, and I’m still glad February only lasts twenty-eight days.

Spring watch

As usual, I went out to greet people in front of the church before worship service this morning. Arthur, the Sunday sexton, pointed out three small white flowers blooming beside the gate, right next to the sidewalk. They’re snowdrops, of course (Galanthus species), the earliest garden flower, blooming right on schedule.

Carol and I walked out to Pope’s Island this afternoon, where we bought the Sunday newspapers and then sat in Dunkin’ Donuts reading and sipping coffee, and looking out the big plate glass window at the lower harbor with Palmer’s Island lighthouse in the distance. With the warm weather this past week, most of the ice has disappeared from the harbor.

But spring’s not here yet. I still see all the familiar winter waterfowl on the harbor. And the forecast is for more snow tonight.

Housemate memories

A cold dark snowy evening, trapped at home alone. Time dragging. Bored, my mind started drifting and for some reason I started thinking about housemates. My thoughts went something like this: Carol and I met when we were housemates. We met Ms. M. when she moved in as a new housemate. Too bad our current apartment does not permit sublets…. And then some of the more extraordinary memories of housemates started bubbling up, like the Dead Mouse Incident….

One morning, I came downstairs to eat breakfast, half-asleep as usual. J— greeted me by saying, “Did you do that?” Did I do what? “Put the mouse in the dog’s water dish.” I hadn’t done it, and we both went over to the dog’s water dish to look at the poor dead mouse floating there. We both giggled silently.

You have to understand, we had not been getting along with N——, the dog’s owner, in large part because she just wasn’t caring for the dog. Being a black Lab, the dog liked to roll in smelly things, and when we complained about the smell N—– would bathe the dog in the tub, leaving dog hair and other gunk plastered over tub and tiles; so J— and I had to wash the dog ourselves under the outdoor shower. The dog had worms and would leave long streaks of excrement on the carpet; N—– would clean the carpet but wouldn’t take the dog to the vet to get de-wormed. Worst of all, N—– would go for days at a time without walking the dog, which made the poor animal more and more neurotic and less and less likable.

To return to the story: N—– came bounding down the stairs, accompanied by the dog, both of them as cheerful as usual. We did not warn her what was in the dog’s water dish. N—– walked over to put food in the other dog dish and screamed when she saw the mouse. “Did you do that?” she screamed at us. We both denied having drowned the mouse.

Our relationships had deteriorated to the point where I doubt she believed us. And though I’m not proud of it, I went off to work in an unusually good mood that morning. N—– moved out a few months later, and come to think of it that’s when Carol moved in. Ten years later, Carol called me in to see something on television, a story about an animal psychologist, and sure enough there was N—– on television with a new dog, another black Lab, going to visit the animal psychologist. I’ve now forgotten what sort of psychological problem the dog suffered from.

Memories of other housemates come flooding back. There was W—, the woman who refused to turn on the radiators in her room because she didn’t like the hissing sound, and who lit dozens of candles in an effort to keep warm (unfortunately, we had to kick her out because we were afraid she was going to start a fire). And S—, who was in the process of discovering she was gay while she lived with us. And D—, who was dealing (gracefully) with the memories of being raped by her father when she was pubescent. And L—, who had the same name as a prominent Boston gangster, and claimed that he once got a phone call from someone saying, “Is this L—? We took care of it.” And the time when J—‘s father died. And R— of the invisible dirt, and J— and E— the M.I.T. students, and others.

It’s easy to tell the stories of the bizarre and notable events, but it’s harder to explain how enjoyable it has been to have housemates, to just sit around the dinner table or on the front porch talking about everything under the sun. People from whom you can borrow music, people with whom you can throw parties, people who can teach you how to bake bread or cook macrobiotic food. Some of those housemates became good friends, like Ms. M., who became our housemate again for one delightful year when we lived in Oakland.

Someday, Carol will get around to making her idea for an eco-village into reality, and then we’ll have housemates once again….

Ice

The ice on the harbor probably reached its greatest extent sometime yesterday. By the time I went out for a walk, the ice reached from the Maritime Terminal on the New Bedford side of the harbor to Fish Island; of course there was no ice over the deep channel between Fish Island and Pope’s Island; but from Pope’s Island the ice extended straight north to the point that lies just below the highway, and south to Crow Island to the boatyards and docks on the Fairhaven side. Gulls by the hundreds perched on the ice between Pope’s and Crow Islands, all facing into the sun.

I walked down to the hurricane barrier. An ice shelf extended from the hurricane barrier up to Fairhaven Shipyard, and bits of rotten sea ice floated on the ocean side. But by then the temperatures had climbed into the mid-thirties, and when I got back up to Pope’s Island, the ice no longer extended to Crow Island; scaup and Bufflehead swam where just an hour earlier the gulls had been perching on ice.

Even though today was ten or fifteen degrees colder than yesterday, even though the clouds moved in and blocked the sun, even though a cold raw breeze backed around from the north to the east, the ice had receded even farther when I went out walking this afternoon. I stopped on the swing span bridge to look at the extent of the ice down the Fairhaven side of the harbor. What caught my eye, though, was not the ice but a pair of Long-tailed Ducks swimming just below the bridge. I was impressed at how long they could remain underwater. I timed them on one dive, and they were underwater for fifty-five seconds. My sense was they could remain underwater even longer than that, but it was too cold and raw to stand there and time them again — cold and raw, as if snow or cold rain was moving in — so I walked on.

A rumor of spring

The two red pennants — signifying a gale warning — over the harbormaster’s office snapped in the winter wind sweeping down out of the northwest. Walking across to Fairhaven, I noticed that the frigid weather of the past few weeks has finally caused a thin skin of ice to grow across a good part of the shallow water between New Bedford and Fish Island. The waves kicked up by the wind reflected off the edge of the ice, but the ice was so thin that the waves also passed through it in a diminished state; the ice was so thin that it was still flexible. When I got closer I could see that the ice had faint lines running through it, so that it almost had the texture of skin. Of course there was no ice between Fish Island and Pope’s Island’ that’s where the thirty-foot deep channel for shipping runs. But ice stretched all the way from Pope’s Island to Fairhaven, and from Fairhaven to Crow’s Island, and thin sheets of ice covered much of the water all along the Fairhaven side of the harbor.

In spite of all the ice, I read today that a thousand Red-Winged Blackbirds arrived in Dover last weekend, just twenty miles north of here: the first rumor of spring.