V's Version

Someone said to me the other day that they had to check the site to find out how my summer went and I realized, of course, that they would be sadly disappointed.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll see if I can evoke some sense of the various places where I was blessed to spend time this summer.

Dani, Pk and I left for the east coast before school had officially ended because the airfares were a fraction of the cost.

Some would call The River House a shack; others would call it a palace. My father’s part-time home in southwestern Rhode Island is what I consider to be a magic place on the Wood River. It is not a domicile of daily habitation but the refuge of a merchant seaman who bakes on the high seas most of the time and returns annually to putter, to nap in the hammock and socialize in the gazebo, to connect with his family and rejuvenate his Yankee soul.

The main structure itself is a modest cabin (maybe 600 square feet) with low ceilings over a narrow galley kitchen where we intimately navigate each other in order to move from the back door into the house. A baker’s wooden workbench serves, among many other things, both as a place to eat and to separate the kitchen from the front room. Cozy, cluttered, sandy and satisfying, the main room is home to an old cast iron woodstove, an enormous roll top desk worthy of a sea Captain, two functional futon couches, an aging rocking chair whose veneer vanished long ago and a comfy old reading chair whose low armrests are made atop maple wagon wheels. The eclectic furniture is enhanced by the odd features of the décor: walls made entirely of thick rough hewn oak boards, nailed into a diagonal pattern over bare insulation by square iron nails; low ceilings made of rustic oak and smoke-yellowed Formica; electrical outlets made into the ceiling; exposed wooden beams with outdated propane lamps still attached; a potpourri of artifacts –inherited New England antiques, knick knacks deposited by friends and family and novelties collected from around the world. It’s like a three-dimensional scrapbook and there is nothing quite like snuggling into it on a rainy day with the fire roaring in the stove.

On one side of the main living room, just next to the woodstove, is a wooden beaded curtain that suggests a partition. Beyond the beaded curtain is a small door marked with a brass sign that reads, “Head” and, next to it, another suggestion of a partition (this one made of a gauzy curtain). Beyond the gauze is the place known as “The Cave.” I liken my father’s Cave to the compact darkness of a seaman’s sleeping quarters (with a little less privacy).

On the other side of the main living room is a panoramic bank of windows and a front door that leads to the magic that is the outdoors. The cabin is surrounded by towering oaks, white birch and fragrant pines and is twenty feet off the Wood River, one of the cleanest, most beautiful winding waterways in the region. A long, wildly wooded river with gentle curves, a strong, smooth current and a few wide open spaces, it is made perfect by the sandy-floored swimming hole directly in front of the cabin. As the large dock overhangs the river slightly, the view is spectacular: mists rising off the glassy surface in the morning, warm sunny afternoons when the breeze from the Atlantic makes its way up the river corridor and calm evenings with rose colored sunsets seen just beyond the silhouette of the forest on the far banks.

Pk loves to cannonball off the dock. My father and his partner Gini take their morning coffee there. Friends and caretakers Dave and Sharon drink beer and smoke cigarettes in the evening, read books and fish for trout on the weekends. I love to watch the mallards and the swans, the great blue heron and red-winged black birds, the Canadian geese and the kingfisher. We all keep watch for the river otter and the beaver, the painted turtles and the snappers. The dock is many things to many people.

That’s how it is at the River House. We each come from out separate lives in separate parts of the country, to connect with nature, with each other and with ourselves. I think my father (one of the hardest working people I know) figures that he may not be wealthy in stocks and bonds but he has the River House and it’s magic to leave as a legacy. He is not the kind of man to throw lavish social gatherings or to show off in any way, for that matter. He is a simple man with both humility (most of the time) and a heart of gold always. He offers his version of paradise to a parade of souls. This parade has changed over my lifetime from a steady stream of people unknown to me in the past to a slow but constant trickle of regulars. My father’s open door policy is both a blessing to him and a curse upon him sometimes!

When my father bought the property with his third wife in the early 1990s, I helped to clean up an old mouse infested trailer that reeked of hunter’s urine and was a blight on the front lawn. With help from some of the parade of souls it was moved to the back of the property, rigged up with electricity and stabilized against rocking on its axels. This became known as the “East Wing”, a word play indicating both the relationship that I have to my father and the trailer’s proximity to his castle. “Princess” was my nickname growing up, as it was my mother’s before me. For better and for worse, I am always princess, never queen, as my father’s old-school chauvinism mandates such respect.

The East Wing is just one of the outer buildings on his small parcel of wooded land. There is also a barn that doubles as boat storage, an outhouse named (long before our time) “Le Toilette, a storage shed that holds at least a cord of wood and an amazing screened-in gazebo overlooking the river that was built by my almost-brother-in-law, Mike, and my sister Jenn. Because the East Wing is at the back of the property and far from the action and because I visit the River House for long periods of time, it has become the place that I have made my home as I have raised a child. I sleep better in the narrow bunk of that little aluminum trailer than anywhere I have ever been. I cannot describe how much of a home it is – with its hand-painted panels and stained glass window, with the breeze off the river and the pattering of rain on the roof.

Some might mind the batting of moths against the frayed screens, the nibbling of mice in the drawers, the silent trail of spiders and ants, but I do not. Some might mind the faint scent of mildew or the knowledge that the bed cushions (circa 1973) have never been washed, but I do not. I feel like it is paradise among the pines and a home to my son who becomes more Huck Finn each year. I find peace and sanctuary in an afternoon nap. I find the space for giggles in a morning of family bed snuggling. I find room to breathe and be aware of all I am, all that I am meant to do.

That is the magic of the River House.

But it is not the end of the story, for I am not alone there. No one is ever alone there for very long. There is the parade of friends and relatives and the friends of relatives and the family of the friends of relatives and the neighbors and the friends of the neighbors and…paradise can get hectic on the weekend.

Rhode Island is, like many New England towns, home to an interesting mix of people. There are the students of Johnson & Wales and Brown Universities and of Rhode Island School of Design, one of the premiere art schools in the country. There are the blue-collar workers of what is, essentially, a blue-collar state – manufacturers of fashion jewelry, fabricators of metal products, makers of electric equipment and machinery, shipbuilders and boat builders. There are hard-core Yankees, second-generation Italian Americans, first generation Latinos and a fair share of corrupt public employees. This is the fabric of Rhode Island and there isn’t a lot of room for clean and sober liberal pagan feminist lesbians, that is for sure. It is the one place in my life where I can offer my son the best of freedom and nature and the worst of male chauvinism and culturally sanctioned alcohol consumption.

Because I am a glass half-full kind of a gal, I am choosing to use the culture that Rhode Island offers as a chance to expose Pk to different kinds of people than we normally encounter in out travels– the kind of people that he will likely deal with as he ventures forth from Central Northern California – away from liberal Santa Cruz, away from lesbian events, away from Unitarian Universalist community. It is good that he witnesses men being jerks and has an opportunity to process the injustice of their actions. It is good that he sees first-hand what it is like when people drink and do drugs – how it changes them in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. I don’t know that I would readily choose to expose him to illegal pyrotechnics or to recreational firearms (paintball and hunting are a big part of many boys lives there) or to negotiating with adults who drink and drive, but, well, there it is. We get the difficult with the easy.

And it probably is for the best, as a lesbian mother, that I expose him to a variety of realities in the safety of our own family. I could never hope to intentionally create the learning opportunities Pk has had in Rhode Island. Role models come in both the people we honor and respect and those whom we experience as unfair, unkind and disconnected. Some I want him to emulate, some I do not.

Still, I wouldn’t trade any of it. The River House is both the paradox and the paradigm of paradise and I am grateful for our friends and family, the river and trees, the nearby soft sand beaches, the seafood and Del’s lemonade, the manly men and their wheeling and dealing, alcohol and its lessons, the camaraderie and the solitude, the loyalty of people who cover your back and then betray you as they talk behind it.

In the meantime, I putter around camp and read in the hammock, clean the river in the canoe and try to capture the pure joy smell essence of sunshine on pine needles. Dani gets to know my family better and Pk is just a kid. He swims and dives, kayaks and hunts for frogs. He sells golf balls back to the golfers at a nearby course and helps his Grampy fix things. He learns hard lessons and climbs tall trees. He has the rare and amazing experience to be utterly bored and to alleviate his boredom by building a fort all on his own. What more could any mother possibly want? We are blessed well beyond measure.