Sagadahoc Story #72: 12/29/98

Ice is making in the river, at last. It begins with a little skim in the morning, then patches of slob start running back and forth with the tide, spinning under the bridge. Windowpane coats the flats, glazing over in frail bridges on the flood, collapsing on the ebb, rebuilding with each tide. Then the main channel knits as the chill settles in. Now frost music is in crescendo, booming in the night. Thin ice hissing along the shore, collapsing like shattered glass. A polyphonic crackle shivering the air, like the crumple of gigantic sheets of foil. Then the random throb of river timpani rings out: lone visceral wow-tones echoing back and forth in diminuendo. A Concerto for Making Ice.

The boys have been getting antsy to shove shanty, but the skim is pretty thin yet, on tidewater. The kids have been skating up on Pleasant Pond, but nobody's on the Cathance, and only one smelt camp is perched on the Abby. An intrepid interloper from Lewiston. He's just a hop-skip-and-jump from shore, which looks like a wise policy. Can't be half a inch of ice out there. Even Brent's holding his fire until this storm cell goes through.

I'm still peddling bike around the village, and it feels weird to have a lungfull of frost without kick and glide. The eagles are back upriver, though, and the immatures are so tame you can cycle right upside the trees they're spudded into without spooking them. Close up they're savage looking things, until they jump, and become visions of ascent.

Yes. We've passed through a chilling time, and faced some cruel creatures this month, but now our hearts are soaring. Peggy's surgery went smoothly, and the pathology reports couldn't be better. She was home for Christmas, as was Seth, and this house has been full of blessings. And family and friends.

A lively bunch, anyhow. One of the joys of staying put in the small town where your kids grow up is the chance to reconvene the parent net years later, and laugh at the wrinkles. The dudes are now in their twenties, but their parents aren't a bit wiser. The only difference is who's buying the beer. And making the music.

We lit in this burg 15 years ago, when Seth was 8, and there was a crew of his age mates within playing distance. He rode his bike to school, and ran wild through town. No problem putting together a team for whatever scheme they had cooking. And the parents of his friends became ours. The Community School was our Mecca.

Community School

The elementary school is the center of a small town. The one civic institution where we come together as equals, sharing goodwill, rooting for the kids. The Community School in this backwater is a happy place to go into, full of sunny rooms, local volunteers, and waist-high hubbub. Plays, sports, assemblies, sales, events where we stand around nibbling baked goods and sipping warm soda, because our kids are part of it, weave a mesh. And we see the other parents at their best, cheering our lot on. The friends you make at the elementary, as kids or as parents, can carry that charge of mutual goodwill down the years.

By the time the kids get into middle school at Mt. A all the frictions of society and adolescence begin to rub some raw spots, but the local elementary is always a joy to hang out at. Of course we only do it when our own children are of an age. Later we stop getting the Falcon Flash, because we don't have a student in residence to carry it home. We nod and wave when we see the other soccer dads, but our paths diverge.

And the place changes by increments. There's a new wing on the Community School, contracted at great authorized expense, grafted onto the original building that was built by volunteers. There's an elaborate playground designed and constructed by an enthusiastic group of parents one year. The old folks over here in Brooklyn have thinned out as the kids have grown and gone, but we're now surrounded by another crop of children. Up to the Elementary there's still a core cadre of familiar teachers, and the decibel level sounds the same.

The noise the twenty-somethings are now making sounds pretty professional. Seth and Bob have been gigging out for years, and it comes as a shock that I can't follow their licks on the flute anymore. Jed can jump in on drums just fine, though. Great to see a bunch of young guys who are comfortable in their skins, even if they haven't a clue where the roads go next. Sunday morning they saw I was in no fit state to choreograph a party, so they sent me out into the woods with the dog, and went shopping for caterings. Filled the kitchen with vegetarian cookery, and boogied down the desserts. Cases of ale on the stoop, smoke in the back yard, lots of laughter.

The whole town was jumping with family doings this week. Maybe that's the purpose of small towns, to have a place to go do Christmas at. All the city relatives put on their rough clothes and truck it to the tulies. To grandmother's house, or the country cousin's. Our daily nets unravel a bit, as we turn attention to kin, and the town is full of vaguely familiar faces with strange license plates. A mix of smiles and hangovers.

I've been clearing my head out back in the gullies, chasing the dog. The sphagnum mosses are full of frost flowers, and you sink down ankle-deep where blooming crystals have lifted the carpet of leaves. Low-angled sunlight pours yellow through the open trees, and the marshes are frozen firm. Serpentine watercourses through drowned alders and maples and willows are marbled with swirls of white and black ice. Like sliding across a chocolate cake. Fern fruits and winter berries. I climb and follow a ridge down to the riverbank, where I can admire the ice music, and look across at town hill. The new sand mountain at the old mill, the hidden side of the old Coomb's School, and the Hall glinting its onion in the cerulean blue.

In light of Peggy's sudden confrontation with uterine cancer, and her hysterectomy, the concern she showed for the Hall seems rather symbolic. The satirical facades she proposed could be emblems of abdominal surgery. I never thought of architectural renovation as life threatening before. Or curative.

From across the river it will hardly matter what they do to the Hall. Now there's a cawing overhead. Through the hemlocks I see a crow harrying an owl. Wonder what that means.