Don’t ask me to remember where I left my coat. Or when I last ate. Or even what day it is.
But I remember clearly eight decades ago, bathing in the brook we called the Stepping Stones. How icy the water was against my ankles, how slippery the stones. My sisters and I would toss the bar of Ivory soap (“It floats”) from one to another. Chewinks called from overhanging branches. Honeysuckle scented the air. Downstream, a patch of watercress flourished, and I would set my feet cautiously on the slippery stones to get to it. Careful not to pull it up by its roots, I’d pick enough for the evening’s salad. I remember nibbling its spicy tips.
I remember our beach house at Quansoo, washed away by the 1938 Hurricane. The scent of the kerosene lamp, the heartbeat of surf lulling me to sleep. The insistent hum of mosquitoes. The bleating of sheep in what was then pasture. I imagined the mother sheep were reassuring their lambs. In the morning, the aroma of the kerosene stove and coffee brewing. And the sound and sense of beating surf.
I remember riding on my father’s shoulders, my hands on his sweat-slippery forehead, my father ducking under branches that might hit me. My mother buckling on my puffy red life jacket for our canoe trip from Dan’l Manter’s boathouse to Quansoo. The sweet rhythm of their paddles, the call of a bird my mother called a “qwock.” The scritch of the canoe touching the shore. My father lifting me out. The feel of muck soiling my bare feet.
I remember as a 4-year-old sitting in the doorway of our barn, later destroyed by the hurricane. My father would shave off curls of fragrant wood from a repair he was making, and toss the curls to me. I draped them over my head and pretended I was Shirley Temple, the child actress.
These remembrances are as clear as though they happened yesterday.
But today I can’t recall what happened yesterday.
“Don’t you remember? You left your coat at Suzanna’s.”
Dear Cynthia,
I have enjoyed reading every one of your books. When wondering where I left something, I think of Victoria T. and become a detective. This letter was an unexpected treasure.
Cynthia,
This is lovely and reminded me of the sensation of riding on my father’s shoulders and the way my stomach fluttered when he dodged branches.
Claire Ganz
Sad that today our brooks carry fertilizers.
Don’t worry about your memory. Don’t you love mysteries? We love your mysteries.
Anne Ganz
Cynthia,
This is lovely and reminded me of the sensation of riding on my father’s shoulders and the way my stomach fluttered when he dodged branches.
Claire Ganz
Sad that today our brooks carry fertilizers.
Don’t worry about your memory. Don’t you love mysteries? We love your mysteries.
Anne Ganz
I love this so much. Many decades later I often canoed or more often sailed a Sunfish across Tisbury Great Pond, not from Town Cove but from Deep Bottom. I saw what were probably the descendants of those sheep at Flat Point Farm. (At the end of the summer the firefighters held their picnic there.) My bare feet sunk in that same muck, or something very like it. A decade or two from now I hope I’ll remember it as clearly. I think I will.
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