The Pregnant Pause

The leaves in my yard are just beginning to turn color.  We know what’s coming.  We don’t know precisely when each tree will shed its seasonal coat, but we know that all but the evergreens will, eventually; and that “eventually” will soon be here.
 

I hate autumn in New England.  There, I’ve said it.  This will come as no news to my friends.  I bitch and moan about it every year.  All you foliage-loving leaf-peepers are more than welcome to come to my house and blow the freakin’ foliage out of my gutters and shrubbery, and off of my driveway and lawn.

What, no takers? 

If it were possible, I would dive in and do it all right now.  All in one shot.  I’d start with what I imagine would be a four foot deep pile, and just git ‘er done.  But of course, that isn’t possible.  Trees don’t shed their leaves overnight.  It’s a long, drawn-out process spanning several weeks.  This ensures the ongoing futility of October and November weekends spent blowing and raking: I no sooner get everything cleaned up, when the next wave hits.  And the next, and the next, and the one after that.  The last holdouts – always the oaks – refuse to drop the last of their loads until the winds of March force the issue.

But now, at this moment, there’s nothing more than the very earliest maple tree beginning to cast its litter on the grass.  We know what’s coming, but it’s not here yet.  All we can do is wince in anticipation.  This is the pregnant pause.

I work for a very large organization.  I manage a team of people whose workplaces are spread across three states.  Recently, our CEO announced a significant restructuring of the company.  This, like the changing seasons, is nothing we haven’t experienced before.  The quest for efficiency is never-ending.  It’s like a force of nature, which is as it should be.  Change or die.  Like a tree, I suppose. 

Nominally, my job as a manager is to keep the dozen or so projects that my team is working on moving forward – business as usual, until we’re instructed otherwise.  But really, my job as a manager is to keep my team members engaged, productive, challenged, informed, on board, and not freaking out.  This is somewhat easier said than done. 

The major themes of the reorganization have been made public, the picture painted in broad strokes; but the full details haven’t yet been released to those below the C-Suite. Human nature being as it is, the rumor mill is buzzing with speculation as to what these details will be.  There will almost certainly be impacts to some in-flight projects, and to staff assignments; but absent specifics, the only prudent course is to keep moving forward, trying as best we can to ignore the noise around us. That’s exactly what we’re doing.

Best efforts to that end notwithstanding, nonetheless, there’s something palpably different about the atmosphere in our office these days.  It’s a harbinger - subtle, elusive, ephemeral.  Defining it is sort of like trying to identify the source of the crispness in the air that signals the start of autumn.  Fighting against it is as futile as trying to make the leaves stay on the trees.  We know what’s coming, but it’s not here yet.  This is the pregnant pause.

Ships in the Night

The ways in which social media increasingly permeate our lives continue to amaze me.  Minor setbacks such as Zuckerberg’s recent reversal of fortune notwithstanding, Facebook and Twitter have cemented themselves as fixtures within our daily routines.  They level the playing field, transcending time, geography, and social standing. 

I’m amused by what seem to be universal memes {and I use that word realizing that I’m inviting the wrath of the oh-so-cool internet ruling class, by definition decades my junior, who may quibble with my usage} among participants in the social media circus.  For example, there’s the unwritten parent-of-teenaged-Facebook-user rule, which holds that one may be allowed to “friend” one’s offspring, as long as one never, ever, posts anything to said offspring’s wall.  There’s the new user buzz – we don’t see too many “new users” anymore, do we? – in which newbie Facebookers are elated to have tracked down the daughter of the gas station attendant from fifteen years and two neighborhoods ago, whom they remember as being just a little girl hanging around the station (surely she will want to be a FB friend, no?)  There’s the celebrity-answered-my-tweet rush (needs no explanation… for the record, Kirstie Alley and Jim Cramer rock.)  And so it goes.

This morning I was reminded of a social media phenomenon that I’ve experienced exactly three times.  Addict that I am, I logged in to check Facebook before setting about my real-life day, and found one of those familiar right-margin “It’s so-and-so’s birthday!” reminders.  Normally, I’m generous with my ‘click-here’ happy birthday wishes.  What the hell, who doesn’t deserve a happy birthday?  So what if I’ve never met this person who friend-requested me out of the blue, and appears to live in India?  But this morning I didn’t click.  Out of respect for my FB friend’s family, I did not post anything to his wall; because he is one of my three deceased Facebook friends.

Steve and I were friends in high school.  We had parted ways after graduation.  He was headed off to join the Army, and I was off to college.  We hadn’t been all that close, really, though we’d shared some good times at a particularly formative phase in our lives.  Steve’s “autograph” in my yearbook reads “Laird’s don’t make soda” – an in-joke, actually directly quoting a police officer (more likely, he was a park ranger – we were too drunk to tell) who had arrived at our campsite and was shining a flashlight into the eyes of four wasted teenagers.  The conversation had gone something like “what are you guys drinking?”  “Umm, just soda.”  And, shining his light on the various bottles strewn about the ground, he commented on some awful concoction called “Apple Jack” that one of us had pilfered from a parental liquor cabinet.  Unlike any such confrontation that might happen today, this one ended pleasantly enough, with Officer Friendly asking “you’re staying put for the night, right?” (modern translation: you’re not going to drive that car tonight!) and asking us to “keep it down” (modern translation:  well, there can be no modern translation, as we’d sure as hell have been hauled off to the pokey, our stash confiscated and parents called, had this happened in the current century; but this was a different time and place.)  We were but a few weeks away from high school graduation, as full of ourselves as we were full of booze, and as aberrant as that night was in the context of an entire life, it is that 17 year old guy who will always remain the Steve of my memory.

I don’t remember which of us reached out to the other, but a few years ago Steve and I reconnected on Facebook.  We had several conversations, none of which had been particularly profound.  I learned that he had traveled a bit with the Army, gone to college, become an engineer, lived in Texas for a while, and eventually settled with his wife, son, and daughter in Vermont.  I shared the parallel tale that was my own story.  It was fun getting back in touch.  He was a good guy.  And then, one day, he was gone; although, eerily, his Facebook page lives on.

So tonight, old friend, I’ll raise a glass to your memory.  And I’ll be drinking something wayyyyyy better than Apple Jack.

Time and Tide

“Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got till it’s gone” --- Joni Mitchell, “Big Yellow Taxi”

 

I’m in Wellfleet for a three day weekend in the middle of September.  The weather is gorgeous, and Cape Cod is simply a beautiful place to be this time of year.  My colleagues at work, knowing only that much, told me to “have a great time.”  Truth is, I’m not having a bad time, but the purpose of my trip is to begin the arduous task of painting our house.  This will be a multiple-weekend undertaking, as I’m working alone, and, well, I’m not a house painter. 

My only companion this weekend is my faithful, elderly dog.  As she’s not much of a conversationalist, my mind wanders as I work.  We bought this house thirteen years and a lifetime ago.  Our two daughters were young then, just four and seven.  We’ve had many good times here, but as time has passed, things have changed.  Our kids no longer care to visit the Cape, save for the occasional trip-with-boyfriend-sans-parents.  I still love the place, but increasingly my time here is spent in solitude.

Earlier this year, I made what I thought was a wise economic decision to sell my boat.  “Laressa” was aging, costly to insure and maintain, in need of a new trailer, and frankly we just weren’t using her enough to justify hanging on.  I was happy with the transaction at the time, but I’ve had a surprisingly powerful case of “seller’s remorse” since we parted ways.  Today I ate lunch at the harbor, sitting on a bench across from the launching ramp that we’d used so many times, watching boaters of varying skill levels launch and retrieve their vessels.  This is something I’ve done for years; it’s a perverse form of amusement, watching for those telltale rookie mistakes and boneheaded moves, feeling ever-so-slightly superior.  Now boatless, my lunches at the harbor seem just a bit masochistic at some level.

As most folks know, in painting as in so many other endeavors, the bulk of the work is in the preparation.  I spent most of today on that task, and I’ve barely scratched the surface.  I began by bringing in the tables, chairs, and tacky nautical tchotchkes that adorn our front patio.  I rolled up the green indoor/outdoor carpets {this is sounding off-the-charts ugly, but trust me, it all sort of works} and that’s when I found them, beneath the ivy that had grown up and over the carpet at the edge of the patio: Billingsgate bricks.  Ghosts of the past.

Billingsgate shoal is an almost mystical place – a sandbar that sits at the edge of Wellfleet Harbor, separating the harbor from Cape Cod Bay.  150 years ago, Billingsgate was an island, upon which had been built a small village of some 30 homes.  Today, it disappears completely at high tide, the buildings and lighthouse having long since been reclaimed by the sea.  One can only get to Billingsgate by boat, as we did so very many times over the years.  It’s a truly unique place, the middle of nowhere, yet so close as to be visible from across the harbor.  On a clear day (at low tide,) you can stand on Billingsgate and see the entire arc of Cape Cod Bay, from the inner harbor to the canal to Plymouth and Provincetown. 

These fragments of bricks, set down years ago as weights to hold down our carpet and now covered with ivy, came home from Billingsgate with our daughters at some point, along with countless shells, smooth rocks, bits of driftwood – an endless variety of beach junk.  A century or two before that, they were almost certainly part of a foundation or chimney on the island.

Had I undertaken this paint job last year, I would have tossed these old, worn brick fragments aside without a second thought; but today I held them in my hands, examined them, reflected on their origins. Then I paused and asked myself “what the hell are you doing?  There’s work to be done…”  And I realized in that moment what had changed: nothing, and everything.  My children are grown.  The fleeting magic that was their youth, and my boat, are gone; and I cannot visit Billingsgate anymore.  Time is a thief, and there is no stronger desire than want for something one cannot have.