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Farewell, Dyke of the FleetMarch 16, 2007 Something else that happened while I was packing, moving, and unpacking: the ferry Islander was retired. (Passive voice fully intended: it wasn't her choice; she wuz pushed.) I didn't go with her on her last journey to Woods Hole, but I didn't entirely miss the occasion either: a poem of mine appears in the Islander supplement that appeared in last week's Martha's Vineyard Times. "Merry Meet Again (Leaving the Island)" is not a new poem. I wrote in late 1981 or early 1982, several years before I moved here -- several years before it occurred to me that I was ever going to move here. I get the gillywobbles reading it now: obviously my higher self knew I was going to move here long before my angst-ridden and indecisive worldly self did:
Today (an unbelievably cold, dreary, slushy day) at the post office a guy I know from Wintertide days knocked on Uhura Mazda's window. I unrolled the window. He wanted to tell me how much he liked my poem. I thanked him. In the last week several people have told me they liked my poem, which means, among other things, that they were reading the Islander supplement. Most supplements in both local papers are blatant vehicles for advertising; this was one of the few that wasn't. We weren't reading this supplement because we were thinking about starting a garden (hah! with frozen slush pelting on the roof!) or planning a wedding; we were reading it because Islander was part of our lives for so long, because Islander was one of us. By the time I wrote "Merry Meet Again (Leaving the Island)" I was already almost certainly thinking of Islander as the Dyke of the Fleet. Which, need I say, is not how most of my fellow Islanders think of her, but as I read the stories in the M.V. Times supplement, I knew we were all on the same wavelength: "rugged construction," "well-constructed, completely and modernly equipped, suited to the job," "such a nice boat, a workhorse," "dependable," "reliable," "the grande dame of the ferry fleet," "May I thank you for doing what you did best, bringing us safely home." Salt of the earth, salt of the sea: you get the idea. "Complete absence of gush," as an ex of mine once said of me. It's probably the dykiest thing about me, and it's why I've long thought of Islander as the Dyke of the Steamship Authority Fleet. The energy that others put into kowtowing and looking cute we put into getting the job done. Islander was launched the year before I was born. We're part of the same cohort. That makes a difference. Islander's successor is the Island Home. On the first Wednesday of March I was driving from Oak Bluffs to Vineyard Haven on the Beach Road and I spied out in Vineyard Sound a very big, very white vessel. I knew at once it was Island Home. In the photographs she dwarfs Islander at the dock. I'm trying to reserve judgment. I won't say anything about the boat until I've made a crossing on her -- which given how often I go off-island may not be for another year. What I already freely and unapologetically hate about her is her name. Island Home: it makes me want to start warbling "My Old Kentucky Home." It's faux, it's nostalgic, it's a summer people name, subliminally telling people who don't live here that it really doesn't matter that they're only here two months of the year, and that their house on the water is their second, third, fourth, or fifth "home," not the place where they do-or-die live. "Islander" is different. If you're an islander, this is your only home; you belong here, either because you were born and grew up here or because you washed ashore and knotted yourself a life here. Not long after I arrived -- not at all sure that I was going to stay (I'm still not sure I'm going to stay; I just keep on knotting) -- I heard some people say that you had to live here three winters before you could call yourself an islander. After three winters -- hah. I felt as if I had a handle on the grammar and knew some of the vocabulary but still hardly dared speak the language in public. A while later I heard that you were an islander when people who'd been here a lot longer accepted you as one. Some days I think I've arrived; other days I think I never will. I've been mistaken for a member of families who've been here a couple of centuries at least, and every time it happens I feel flattered. At the same time I know I'll never be the kind of old islander who believes one should only get one's name in the paper when one's born, when one's married, and when one dies. I love getting my name in the paper, and I don't plan to get married.
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