Flood Tide
In summer, sometimes, a flood tide comes to Duxbury Harbor. One auspicious July, when I was so in love with Lee Kennedy, the father of our three children, Lee Michael, Shaila, and Eugene, when I was so full of hope that I could integrate my family life and my love life and my writing life, the flood tide came and it raised the level of the water about 12 feet. The salt sea south of Boston rolled up onto the grassy banks above the beach, all the way up to the porch front of our neighbors, the Fawcett’s house. From our built-in-1786 colonial, across the street, we felt as if we were directly on the waterfront.
In the heat of that late afternoon, the air grew thick with the scent of beach roses mixed with the marshy heathers. Because the harbor water, peaceful as a lake, was so close to us, we could hear the nearby sounds quite clearly. It was as if the water acted as an amplifier. The setting sun colored the flood tide deep orange and the ice cubes tinkling in the Fawcett’s cocktail-hour drinks signaled the end of the day.
Duxbury residents prided themselves in punctuality, and they were given to little rituals that marked their south-of-Boston hours. Early morning jogging , beach combing, or sailing…, breakfast, brunch, lunch, tea time, cocktail hours and after-dinner cordials, Saturday morning Yacht Club gatherings, Sunday afternoon golf games. Each activity was scheduled and necessary. It didn’t matter that everyone had the usual problems of life, sometimes fiercely troublesome; it didn’t matter when births happened, or deaths happened, the New England Puritan ethic prevailed, if only on the outside—for show. It was the little rituals that held us together somehow; I’m speaking of how couples stayed together, and how town meetings were run, and how the police behaved. Duxbury was a sane town, except for the occasional suicide or cheating husband, or pregnant adolescent, except for the tragic day that a brilliant boy went stark raving mad and shot and killed his paternal grandmother.
When tourists drove through town to view the original Pilgrims’ landing site, which Duxbury really is, or to see the lilac trees that John Alden brought with him as mere roots on the Mayflower from England, we all felt safe. We didn’t know who the alcoholics and prescription drug addicts were. No one screamed or howled with rage or regret in Duxbury; and no one shuddered with electric lust either. There were only sighs and quiet tears. The little rituals kept anyone from being alone too much to succumb to self pity. And at night you could walk the streets unafraid. Perhaps we all would have gone stark, raving mad without the scheduled rituals.
But when flood tides came to Duxbury they transformed those of us who lived there into playful spirits, nymph-puppets of the unseen gods. The usual took on an exotic flavor. That auspicious July flood-tide night, even workaholic Lee arrived home early. The kids were about 7, 8, and 9 then. It was the summer of my first (and only) thong bathing suit—bought by Lee—and delivered by him. He usually bought all the clothes he wanted to see me in and disliked most of the purchases I bought for myself. When he was around I wore his designer choices; when he was away, I was comfortable in my own off-the-rack casual wear. Even my wardrobe was split between the authentic me and the me I was supposed to project as wife of a rising super star—the papers were already referring to Lee as the “Building Tsar of Boston.”
At flood tide, though, there are no roles to play; we are stripped to our primal selves. We swim naked in the salt-lick satin waters, the collective unconscious so aware of our sea origins.
As soon as Lee’s car turned into the driveway the kids went rushing out to announce that the flood tide had come. Quickly we all changed into our bathing suits, grabbed our towels and went running down the pathway beside the Fawcett’s that led to the harbor beach and the raft, the place we usually swam when the regular tide was in. At low tide, we dug clams in the mud, watched the gulls circling, hunting, and swooping down on their own shellfish treats; and sometimes we just walked out to the raft, hopped on it and waited for the tide to come in and lift it up. Before long, we’d be rocking and having a shouting, splashing good time. But tonight we moved in silence. Even the full moon was in awe of the splendid happenstance.
We all slipped out of our bathing suits and slid into the bath-warm water. As we swam across the silver sheen, mirroring the night sky, the drops of water that fell off our bodies looked like liquid crystals. Slowly we formed a circle and held hands. We barely needed to tread water because there was so much salt in it we were buoyed up like rubber ducks. In this hushed and solemn moment I felt that nothing could ever break apart our family. I felt our oneness, our immortality. Then we let go of hands and Lee who was next to me turned and kissed me passionately on the lips. His erection nudged my thighs. We wrapped ourselves together. Only then was the silence broken as the children, so happy to see us so demonstrative in front of them, giggled with embarrassment. We frolicked like this for more than an hour, staying in the flood tide until it began to recede. I intuited that each of us knew that we had been part of an amazing event, an Earth ritual, perhaps; and that what we had shared that night was sacred.
Yet, within just a few short years I would begin breaking apart our cozy nest.
I would get tired of waiting for Lee to come home, waiting and wishing for him to grab me in his arms and make love to me. To ease the long wait between companionship and love making, I began another life faraway from Duxbury. I threw myself wholeheartedly into being the writer I knew I was born to be. At home I was a dutiful housewife and a devoted mother. At the Blue Parrot in Cambridge, down the street from Harvard and the Radcliff Institute for Women’s Studies where I attended weekly poetry workshops, I was a free spirit. My friends were poets, artists, activists, journalists and fellow feminists. We met in smoke-filled cafes, drank espresso, and avoided all things mundane. Manic in our quest to save the world, for respect, for recognition, we talked until our jaws ached. I became such an ardent worker in the Women’s Movement that I often saw my own life as one of oppression. I was not just fighting for the rights of other women; I was also fighting for my own equality. The more involved I became with work outside of the home—outside the safe suburban parameters of Duxbury—the more I longed to live on my own, financially and emotionally independent of a man. What’s more, I started to fantasize a life of sexual freedom. I was only a few feminist footsteps away from feeling totally claustrophobic in the confines of monogamy. And once I got a job as freelance arts reviewer with the Patriot Ledger, a city newspaper in Quincy, on the outskirts of Boston, there was no returning to the wooden spoons and pruning scissors—at least not on a permanent basis. I was off and running, to only God knew where.
In the end, I turned out to be a worse workaholic than Lee—putting my work, my “mission” before everything else—even before my own children. Some days I only slept for three or four hours, sitting in my studio writing, writing, writing. Soon I came to realize that all my declarations of undying love for Lee might have been lies. How else could I explain that once I was out of the house and even before our divorce was final I had fallen in love three times? Had the flood tide washed away the moral code I had once so proudly lived by? Or was that a lie as well? Only time would tell— time and five marriages later.
But cradled in the arms of that Flood Tide Night, the future did not exist, and even now, decades later, what matters, what remains, is that moment.
Tough stuff, compellingly written!
ReplyDelete