Today it was really was/is really hot, which led me to think about Maine, specifically Sonny, the almost 80-year-old ex-mechanic who was Connie across the street's boarder.
He may have been "ex," but he worked at a recycling place just across the river in Randolph (his birthplace, a slightly different country). Recycling centers in Central Maine are also liquor stores and gathering places. There's bottle and can redemption in Maine, so people pick them up to get cash. (In fact, when I moved to PA and first saw an Amish guy on a bike with a cart behind him, I automatically thought it was someone who had lost his license because of DUI and was now picking up cans to survive). On hot days I so love remembering how Sonny would wheel up the street in his beat up F150 on the wrong side of the road, then leap out brandishing a giant bottle of something so he and C could have cocktails. (Once in a great while I joined them on their porch, for a G&T, but typically would have to go home and take a nap for several hours; they were that strong. Meanwhile these 78- and 85-year-olds could carry on for hours). Not long after I moved in, Sonny asked me out. I turned him down, which caused Connie to be very PO'd for years. Sonny was okay about it. I think of him, now also dead, because he hated the heat so much. Connie was difficult in a lot of ways and when she imbibed, could be mean. At first, she made many remarks about "educated people," until one day in an Irish way I set her straight on that point. The turning point with C. came when I wrote her a Christmas card one year saying that she was a "great lady," which she was. Not in the sense of being witty and likeable, like my Aunt Gabe, but Connie had Gabe's sense of service. She was active in the Methodist church and took care of Alberta, a 90-year-old recluse who lived down the street with her pug (he peed on newspapers) and spent most of her days listening to police radio. The house stunk, but Connie washed Alberta's linens and shopped for her. When they were younger, they had socialized a lot together, when their husbands were still alive. But the neighborhood had changed and people were as isolated looking at their screens in small town Maine as elsewhere. Connie lost her husband Bill, a former Nova Scotia potato farmer who worked at the grocery store. He was a great guy and she missed him but carried on. She also had had a first husband who died young of Hodgkin’s disease. She longed for Minnesota, where he was from. She called it "The Promised Land." Connie and her first husband had had three daughters. Two of them died of cancer while I lived across from Connie. One of them, Vicki, went back and forth to Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston for a couple of years. Eventually she lost both legs. Connie had a ramp built, and I remember her pushing/walking with Vicki in her wheelchair up it. Later her second daughter also died; sadly, I cannot remember her name. Connie carried on, baking pies for church suppers. We had chats in her crowded den about politics and God and the town. She died about eight years ago and I saw online that Sonny also died around four years ago. He called her "Mother"--he had been her boarder for at least 40 years. He felt she had been "so good to him." When I think of Connie, I think of that Seamus Heaney line in "The Cure at Troy," that "people get hurt and they get hard." That is one of the truest things I’ve ever heard, and it is a great call to love. She wasn't easy, but I also think I was somewhat of a Boston snob when I moved there, which faded over the years. I could have done much better, I see now. How much people want to be seen, loved and honored for their "ordinary" lives. Today there can be so much instant stereotyping of people. We live in a disconnected age. But I remember now these good neighbors and how they were made up of so much nuance. I honor nuance and complexity. I’ve had so many discoveries of their character, which only occur when one knows people over time. I'm glad I knew them, and though long dead, I know they would be with me complaining on hot days, longing for the cool air of Maine. From The Cure at Troy -Seamus Heaney Human beings suffer, They torture one another, They get hurt and get hard. No poem or play or song Can fully right a wrong Inflicted and endured … History says, don’t hope On this side of the grave. But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up, And hope and history rhyme. So hope for a great sea-change On the far side of revenge. Believe that further shore Is reachable from here. Believe in miracle And cures and healing wells. Call miracle self-healing: The utter, self-revealing Double-take of feeling. If there’s fire on the mountain Or lightning and storm And a god speaks from the sky That means someone is hearing The outcry and the birth-cry of new life at its term. News Feed posts Active Ann Conway 4m · Shared with Public |
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May 2024
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