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So LuckyMarch 30, 2006 For months I've hardly been outside without a turtleneck on, and at least two layers on top of it. This morning I walked into town in flannel shirt with just my faded, frayed-cuff, nearly worn through in places denim shirt over it. No longjohns, no gloves. Last night I slept with the window open. In case the pinkletinks, the crocuses, and the horsehair waffles on the stable floor weren't enough -- it really is spring. Spring is as miraculous and jubilant, as playful and fresh as all the songs say it is, but it's also the harbinger of summer, and if you live on Martha's Vineyard that means the joy is leavened with a little dread. Summer means full employment -- often overemployment -- but it also means your life spins out of control; you rarely see your friends except in passing at the post office or the grocery store; it takes four times longer to get anywhere, and some places you can't get to at all; the newspapers shout invitations to concerts and plays and all sorts of events but you don't have the time, the energy, or the money to attend any of them, unless someone takes you by the hand and drags you there. I moved eight times my first three years on the Vineyard. I've had countless friends and acquaintances who've moved more times in more years, and with kids in tow -- uprooted at the end and then the beginning of each school year -- but still it makes an impression. It skews your calendar and your view of the world. After a while you take it for granted; it comes to seem normal, even though it really is appalling. Toward the end of my first year on Martha's Vineyard I wrote "Winter Rental," a series of six sonnets about the upheavals of spring. I still remember the first time I read it in public. It was at Wintertide Coffeehouse when it was held at the youth hostel. A woman came up to me afterward to tell me how moved she was; she and her family had been moving twice a year for I don't remember how many years and she'd never heard anybody write about it. That might have been the moment I began to realize that my life's work was to write about Martha's Vineyard, not the celebrated tourist trap but the place that's home to year-rounders who cling like barnacles to the pilings while summertide rises and nearly drowns them and in fall pull their lives back together till the next vernal disruption. The summer people don't see us. They can't afford to: they don't want to know about the casualties of their summer vacations. They say "You're so lucky to live here year-round." I don't move twice a year any more. Between September 2001 and July 2002 I moved twice, but I've been in the current location ever since. It doesn't have a kitchen, but it's year-round, it allows dogs, the neighborhood's great, and it's within walking distance of town. My deal with the muses is "if you want me to write about Martha's Vineyard, you've got to come up with housing and enough money to live on." So far, so good.
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