Common Luxuries
by Robert P. Barsanti
The boys and I are working on our two words for the summer: "Situational Awareness." The boys are boys, but at that time of life when everything is a tackling dummy propped up near them. Their bodies have gotten bigger than their minds. One will turn without looking and clear out a rack of postcards. The other will run at the Stop and Shop and sideswipe two lightship baskets and their owners.
Worse still, they like to stand in the surf, feel the waves pick them up and drop them on the sand, and then go back and bounce on the sandbar amid the surfers. The surfers are just out of the Volvo from Rowayton and, five years ago, when they were last here on vacation, they had some skill on the board. They are sure they can navigate around my boys heads. I am less so.
So I am teaching the boys to take a moment to look around, see what is nearby that could possibly either injure them or yell at them, then take appropriate care. And they try, but cars, candy, and computer games drag them from their best intentions and leave them blocking the vegetable aisle while they read the latest from Nintendo.
The summer requires more awareness from everyone. The strangers walk the stores and fill the sidewalks. The wash up at Ladies Beach with surfboards, boogie boards, and dogs they can't control. And they clog the streets while they motor on vacation.
Most islanders are not on any sort of vacation in July. No, we are pulling doubles, working sixty hours a week and dreaming of February. Summer is the time to scoop ice cream, pour blueberry lemonades, and mow lawns. The gentle folk who love to evaluate the roses and the spouting hydrangea at about fifteen miles an hour are keeping me from putting on my apron and scooping ice cream for America. The weather we commute in, or paint and prune in, is indeed beautiful and refreshing, but our days are measured in dollars and our months are in paychecks. It's not our vacation and it's not Disney World.
Islanders see the whole season, from Daffy Day to Columbus Day, as one long parade that marches by on the street while you are working on the roof. The garden tours, kitchen walks, and author talks pass by almost unnoticed. So much of the summer is spent like beach fleas, buried in the sand and occasionally doused by seawater. Great sunsets come and go while we do the dishes, clean the grill, and guess on final jeopardy. We live amidst common luxury; we ignore the million dollar view while we get two dollar coffee.
If you live on-island long enough, you lose another sort of situational awareness; we stop seeing how lucky our situation is. The couple from Pennsylvania think the rosebushes are special and they are posing in front of them. We see those rose bushes every day, and they have become invisibly pink to us. They are the same as they were yesterday, last week, last year, and will be the same for the next ten years.
The tourists, however, do not have our same eternal mindset. While natives believe they will never leave Nantucket, visitors know how many hours they have left. They will only see these roses once before they have to get back on the boat. The roses in King of Prussia aren't the same; they don't bubble up over the split rail fence at the Burger King. The tourists have only a short time out here before they go back to the drive-through lines and traffic lights. They treasure what islanders ignore.
Because their time is so short, our visitors will tolerate more than an islander will. They will wait in line at the Juice Bar and they will circle the Stop and Shop parking lot. When the water is a little cool, a little flat, and the wind is wrong, they will still drag their surfboards into the ocean and wait for one wave. The surf may be better in two weeks, but they will be back on the Schuylkill and not at Cisco. On that last day, when the car is packed, they will list the things that they just didn't have time to do. No trips to Pocomo Point this year, no fried clams, and somehow they missed out on the Carnival. When your time is short, everything tastes better.
Perhaps you behave better as well. I finally took an hour to sit at the brewery on a hot Monday afternoon. But at four o'clock, I was surrounded by 100 sunburnt lottery winners from the mainland. They huddled in their own little Connecticuts. We stood while they sat, built a tower of resentment, and loaded the snide guns.
Then, a woman in a big floppy hat gave us two chairs. Ten minutes later, her husband (a Yankees fan) sent down their cheese tray to us. Another couple, one table over, brought over chips and salsa. And we were set. It was odd and it was not. With a cold beverage in my hand, the short shadows of July, and the distant roll of the ocean, the island was at its best. Nature held us in the palm of her hand. We had become aware of the situation.
The situation is that we are all lottery winners out here on this island. For the moment, we wake up to the roll of the surf and the flow of the roses. In the afternoon, we can stand in the ocean, then go home to boil corn, grill cheeseburgers, and sleep to a sea breeze through an open window. And the situation is also that we will all have to get on the boat, sooner or later, so it wouldn't hurt to be gracious, generous, and considerate.
