You've Got It

Pushed up the wedding so I could devote myself to other responsibilities, and now...

Here they come. It was at about minute 23 of the 158 minutes of the mailboat company's board of directors conference call that the president introduced me as a nominee to the board, noting "she is the new go-to person when you need someone on a board." And I thought "I really should have turned this one down..."

But I stayed on and listened to the collection of voices- some very familiar from other boards, some less so. Seriously, I spend more time talking/listening to wealthy white men about money than I ever imagined I would. Between now and the 14th I need to go about writing my own contract for the Island Community Development Corporation's executive directorship- and that's just the start there. Then I need to get my shit together to actually manage the damned thing: getting the money to build new houses, getting the content together for a website to market the island, manage the current properties and microloan program, etc.... I think the worst thing about responsibility is the whole prospect of disappointing people. It's worse when those people are your neighbors. That said, they effectively volunteered me. So I guess they get what they put forth. And I was their best bet. Yep, I'm the least busy, comparatively young, well-educated warm body on an island of about 50 people.

Not yet experienced enough to say "no."

The way I see it (having now imbibed the greater portion of the neck of a bottle of Stella), it's not unlike having to direct the Xmas show out here. A painful rite of passage that I will survive and then grow out of. Hopefully won't even be tarred and feathered. We'll see. Just need to define what bits I am responsible for then see them through.

My only growing concern in this muzzy beginning of increased responsibility is the quality of life I'll see for the next year or so. As it is, I feel like I only ever see islanders across a committee table, never a dinner table. The things that drew me to the island are more like memories than realities- which I guess is part and parcel of no longer being new here, of commuting to work off-island, to being a part of some serious social change on the island (becoming involved with Dave made me the target of Opinions and the cause of Some Awkwardness- so it goes).

A task at a time, I suppose. Am rather assuming that my thirties will be about working my ass off, now that I have some confidence in my abilities (and more to the point, other people do and will pay me for it). The good news is that at the beginning and end of the day, Dave is now legally bound to be there for me through it! And thanks to the generosity of friends and family I have a comfy new mattress with lovely new sheets, a comforter, and quilt to ensure that I sleep well when I do get to bed. Now hopefully to get some land and a house to put that bed, paid for in small part by creating houses for future islanders.

Caesura

And, breathe.

A week ago was the bridal shower. A week from now we will have rehearsed, and will be just starting the rehearsal dinner, currently the part of the wedding I am most able to look forward to.

This wedding thing? I guess it is just a crucible.

And I can make my peace with that. A week ago I couldn't. In a little over a week it will be a story- memories, with the mementoes and photos to back them up. But tonight, all is quiet. Dark, cozy, and quiet. Dave is off to attend Abigail's sports award banquet and to pick her up for Thanksgiving break. They'll be home tomorrow on the late boat. The house (at least the first floor) is in still in some semblance of order from when I cleaned last weekend for company. There is still a certain amount of wedding cultch: the boxes from the shower I haven't brought to the burn barrel; the very heavy box of tablecloths and runners that just came in today; the dress in its bag lounging on the love seat whispering "attend to me..."

The place is slowly taking shape, actually, in the way that houses do. It's now about 338 days since we moved in here. And the place was pretty spartan. Today I came home and realized that it now officially looks like I live here. Those of you who were around for the Spinster Pad probably know what I mean. Variations on the theme of tea. The major differences being the gun cabinet, a TV, and the impressive assortment of commercial fishing outerwear about the place. Eventually in some other house I will probably find a way for Dave's three stuffed and mounted bears to look genteel.

At any rate, it was nice to come home and feel a bit more at home- and we do now have the amenities of a washing machine and dryer- and, thanks the the generosity of island women, matching towel sets. Don't even get me started on the matching glasses. It's funny, as slightly weirded out as I was by having a bridal shower- attention and gifts on any kind of large scale discomfit me- I think the shower was a turning point in how I felt about this whole awful process of having a wedding. Yep. People will gather around to and look at you. And give you presents.

And it will be okay.

I was raised with the "it is better to give than to receive" ethos, and have more than a passing affection for the prayer of St. Francis. So this recipient stuff freaks me out. That's part of why the wedding planning bothered me. If it is for my benefit, I don't like to ask much of anyone who is not blood family or friend family.

So asking for help, and asking people to abruptly make plans, and then to create a registry of stuff for people to buy for me? The people close to me saw my beastly bits- not only do I not like to ask people for things, but I am also pretty introverted, so don't have much of an internal drive to have people bear witness to anything. Plop that combo into the position of bride and there will be crankiness.

But then Heather fed me wine and showed me on graph paper that things could indeed work out. And the best possible housing opened up, despite a very strained friendship. And people I love reminded me that the people I love are really, really good people.

Tonight finds me home, in peace. Dave and Abigail will be home from New Hampshire tomorrow, and my adopted Abbigail (teach and you are bound to accrue children from time to time) is due home at eleven, or there will be hell to pay! Over the course of the week I was elected Executive Director of the affordable housing/economic non-profit for the island, and accepted a position on the board of the mailboat company. The big reason I moved the wedding was to better be able to focus on this kind of community work- happily settled, on the other side of this rite of passage.

Islander?

This weekend we took what was, to my mind, our honeymoon. Dave wasn't sold on the concept, but it was retreat enough for me. We registered for the Sustainable Island Living Conference that the Island Institute was holding in Rockland. Splurging (only a very little) we got two nights in a bed and breakfast rather than in the cheap rooms.

Checking in the first night, we came to the surprising realization that we were assigned to separate restaurants for lunch the following day, which put a crimp in the togetherness, but all in all, it was nice to be off island.

I like ideas, I like listening to people, new knowledge. I am also very fond of the staff of the Institute. The first night, we listened to Woody Taasch give a presentation on the concept of slow money- and it was pretty much the first entirely free-associative power point presentation I have ever seen. The man was clearly a Very Intelligent man, which meant you needed to make the connections on your own because he wasn't going to spoon feed them to you. Peace be upon the wiry-haired geniuses of the world. And upon the concept of investing in people and meaningful products of use and value... harkened me back to one of my favorite Puritan ideas- competency, which is to say earning "enough." Not a killing, but a living.

The next day there was another speaker, a wonderful reconteur from Ocracoke, NC. Then break-out sessions broken up by a really good lunch. The theme this year was island-to-island connections and conversations, so there were islanders from Oregon, North Carolina, Block Island, and Prince Edward Island. Whenever we talk about the islands in Maine, there's always a strong sense of solidarity, but equally strong understanding that each island has a lot of very unique circumstances and challenges. The solidarity, I believe, comes from knowing that there are very definite limits to what can be sustained, and a feeling that stewardship and restraint is always paramount. You have to think, you have to care, you have to plan, and collaborate. And the stakes always seem so high, the place so dear.

And oh, how seriously we take it all; how continuously we can talk. Get islanders talking, and they can continue on into perpetuity. I suppose that is the one infinite resource we can claim.

So we chatted away the time, over good food, and with the easy connection that comes from the shared identity of "islander."

And how did I become one of these hard-headed folk? Why did I pick up on that as an identity? My friends went on to other places, my family moved back to their home town on the mainland, and I bounced my way back to the the same bay. Wrapped myself back in the mantle of a way of life that is just plain difficult.

Because the only guarantee is that there will be a lot of work. Which may be futile, and will likely be thankless. And the reward, it seems is the identity. Hey, look at us, tough enough to survive on the edges. It is not romantic, or noble. It is a collective of people who are addicted to uneasy, who get accustomed to the idea of nowhere as the only where.

That said, I very much enjoyed the intimacy of the weekend, the ideas, the comradery. The conversations, the passion for place. I don't know why I ended up an islander, I don't know that it is a choice, or that at this point I could change.

And still I wonder, which island will win out.

And on especially long days, I think the mainland seems like heaven. Surely I could find a nice piece of nowhere there.

Belong

Tomorrow is a red letter day, at last, a meeting I am highly excited about.

Dave and I will meet with Rob, the minister we've asked to perform the wedding ceremony, in order to begin shaping the proceedings and vows. I am a words person. What's been odd is when I sit down to formulate what I would like to say on the occasion of the wedding, I don't draw a total blank, but I am not quite as facile as is my wont.

What am I promising, and why? How did I come to the conclusion that I would throw in my lot with this one person?

In large part, through much of my life, I've felt like a kid, ever on the verge of sitting down in a school cafeteria. A new kid, a marginal kid, a doesn't quite fit in kid. There's ever the agonizing choice of trying to decide where you might be tolerated, that you are- more or less- a stranger to every table. As an adult I have learned to assess, make a choice, and fake confidence, trusting that comfort may come in time. Have also spent enough time with myself that hey, I can belong with me, and that's okay for a time, too.

But there's nothing quite like the loneliness of knowing there's no place for you.

And there's also nothing like knowing someone is saving the space next to them, just so they can have the pleasure of your company.

Finally meeting Dave, was when I found my place. I'd only ever interacted with him in passing, and I recall thinking he was kind of fun to be around- a novel face at library hours it might be nice to see around more frequently. When we finally ended up sitting together at the cafe one morning, we picked up a conversation as old friends do. And that conversation just kept going. Easy and joyful as breathing.

In the morning we share our coffee, then work together or apart, and at the end of the day, I put my plate down next to his plate, my pillow next to his pillow. Go to sleep pleased that for the next day and the next, that process will repeat.

We are for each other.

He, me, now we. There's a stability in that, yes. It's something I always wanted, but never expected. The fast friend, willing to make room for you in their day and work out an infinite number of compromises, until it's time to pick out the urns.

But now, where is the space for us? The whole that is now more than sum of the parts? Where Dave was once welcome, and Morgan was allowed, is there room for DaveandMorgan?

So back to the entrance of the cafeteria...

Pick an Island...

We need to pick an island. To go all in, one one side of the water or the other. For the last year and now into this one, I have straddled the breach between this outport and the main- straining into a split, to make ends meet. While this makes one more flexible, it doesn't allow for much in the way of repose.

Dave is, quite literally, at square one. Renting the same house he started in when he first came to the island 18 years ago. The same house, almost two decades later. One could argue it hasn't aged as well as him, though he might argue they aged apace. At forty-one, he could echo his mid-twenties: buy a piece of land, and build anew while renting this house. Buying an existing house isn't an option, since the starting price for the current "for sale" crop is $600,000. No, I perjure myself. The house we are in is for sale, at a price less tempting than a better piece of land and a home constructed with our own mistakes, more lovingly maintained. Financially, this means paying rent while trying to make enough money to build a new home in a location that requires all materials to be barged out.

Needing to investigate the alternative, we took a day to tour homes on the other island. As we talked to the Realtor about the realities of life on the outer edges of the coast- the costs, the lugging, the sparse services and minimal employment options- it made us wonder why anyone would choose that life, a life that doesn't serve their better financial interests. We looked at homes- our major requirements were a bit of land, a bit of privacy. There was one house, just off a busy street, that sat surprisingly secluded down a drive of disrepair, among the kindest copse of hardwoods one might ever meet. The land was grown up, the house somewhat ashamble- but it was ineffably sweet. A place you could pump money, sweat, and love into, and be repaid tenfold by quality of life. While we were poking and prodding, and walking about, the sky blackened, the clouds cracked, and the rain began to pour down. Sheltered beneath the canopy of the maples, we barely felt a drop. I left not just a little in love.

The visits were somewhat downhill from there, each one a reminder that this was a bigger island, with more people, more conveniences, more cars, more everything- except for what was less. Less quiet, less forced intimacy with the neighbors. More wildness, less wilderness.

It felt- suburban. Downeast suburban, but suburban nonetheless.

After two years on the unbridged island, my sense of scale shifted. After a year of living on one and working on the other, I feel I've lost my equilibrium altogether.

Astronomical Aberrations in the Island Microcosm

Funny thing about assorted town duties- they pile up and preclude the composition of personal essays (especially in Junejulyaugust).

It's now September.

Now normally, summer blazes by: all the energy, work, and closening quarters compressing, compressing into the blue streak fury of August... then

Red Shift.

It takes the island eight or nine months of dormancy to recover.

This year, September did not bring the shift. Yes, the weather changed- the longed for clarity is here. The crowds are less crowded. The day affords fewer hours of light. The season is changing as is meet and proper.

But there is no sense of island-as-sanatorium. Every evening a meeting; every day still some to-do. The summer schedule persists. The frequency of meetings is no less intense.

And we persevere (grumbling) saying "surely in October..."

red like the leaves, the cranberries...

The Idle Ides of August

One of the best fishing laws in this state is the one that disallows lobstering on Sundays in June, July, and August. One. Blessed. Day.

We went to bed on Saturday night, delighted at the prospect of sleeping late: we did in fact revel in our dream time, until the cats woke us up extra early. I myself passed the hours from 4am to 7am pondering town politics, the logistics of getting bags of compost from Barter's Lumber in Deer Isle to my garden, thought about what sort of house design (not mansard-roofed) could carry off a cupola and still suit its surroundings, among sundry other things. A small percent of the time was spent jockeying with Dave about who should be getting who coffee.

Predictably, we waited until 7:30, when we could stumble out of the house, across the yard, and into our neighbor's cafe. The win/win solution is to have Kate (or Steve) make the coffee. Pepe, who had been launched outdoors sometime earlier, immediately joined us on the trip next door- though being furry and prone to curiosity that manifests in surface climbing, he is not allowed into the cafe. So he settled in on the steps outside the sliding screen door.

The magic of Sundays on Isle au Haut is this: the whole time frame of the day is shifted forward by two hours. Locals crawl out of bed at seven instead of five: summer people stir at nine, not seven. This allows for a window at the cafe, from 7:30 to 9:00am, when we can congregate and actually spare some time for talking to one another, rather then just shooting sympathetic glances. Today was a particularly nice gathering, as it was the first wedding anniversary of one of the island's long-standing couples.

Conversation meandered, like it does but its core was very current- the seasonal topic is seasonal visitors. We dissected their pedestrian patterns, their mooring habits, their fascinating expectations about what amenities will be on an island that is generally advertised as amenity free.  Of course, summer people (of every category- day tripper to six monther) come in all of the same stripes as locals- some are gems, some are jerks.  Now's just the time when we're facing a density of them, and some are more dense than others, which makes for good stories.