There’s a new syndrome lurking out there: Shiny Object Syndrome, or, appropriately enough, SOS. SOS manifests as a continual state of distraction, brought on by the belief that there is always something new worth pursuing. To make things worse, the onset of SOS usually comes at the expense of something already planned or underway. Sound familiar?

Crows and magpies apparently suffer from Shiny Object Syndrome. So do some people I know.  One moment these good people are zigging, and then all of a sudden, they’re zagging, distracted by some bright, new shiny object. They just can’t help themselves. SOS is even worse among people who are susceptible to another acronym: FOMO, Fear Of Missing Out. SOS hits the FOMO population hard because that next shiny object in the road is sure to cloud their judgement and cause them to lose focus lest they miss the next big opportunity. Trust me on this

There’s another troublesome aspect of Shiny Object Syndrome: it often causes people to become fixated on something small and shiny, and, in the process, to lose sight of the bigger picture. Sufferers pounce on a new trend or idea and suddenly they’re off on another tangent. Nothing can stop them, at least until they encounter the next shiny object in their path. And on and on we go…

And therein lies the rub: there is always a next shiny object. My favorite poet, Robert Frost, knew this all-too-well. Consider his short masterpiece, “Nothing Gold Can Stay:”

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

It’s a sad truth: tarnish is inevitable, and moreover, something new, a brighter and shinier object, is sure come along to captivate us. Let’s be honest: it’s harder and harder to stay on track in a world that spins as fast as this one. Sigh.

I tend to be a one-thing-at-a-time kind of guy. Some people may find that boring, but I know no other way of living. I’m by nature suspicious of shiny objects, maybe, because like Mr. Frost, I’ve learned that nothing gold can stay. I guess I’d never make it in a murder of crows.

Is there a cure for SOS? If there were, I’d corner the market. However, short of a cure, there  may be an alternative way of thinking about those meddlesome shiny objects. For example, maybe instead of chasing after them, we could stop and consider refocusing our attention on the here and now, and remember why we picked up our current shiny object in the first place. OK; so maybe our current object is a bit tarnished, but that doesn’t mean we should automatically discard it for something shinier. Maybe a little polish and recommitment is all it needs.

All this isn’t to say that I am anti-change. Change is fine as long as it’s appropriate change. I’m just not convinced that all shiny objects are worth their apparent weight in gold. So before you decide to pick up the next one you see, stop and consider the one you’re already holding in your hand. Maybe you already found your shiny object.

Don’t be a crow.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His new novel “This Salted Soil,” a new children’s book, “The Ballad of Poochie McVay,” and two collections of essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”), are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is Musingjamie.net.

 

 

 

Sixty-three years ago today (September 26,1960), Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy participated in the first live television Presidential debate. Howard K. Smith was the moderator. By today’s standards, it was a remarkably civilized encounter. Most historians believe that Mr. Kennedy “won” the debate, maybe because his suit was darker and more telegenic, or because Mr. Nixon’s brow glowed with perspiration (he had a slight fever that day), or because his beard looked heavy, or because he looked “shifty” while Mr. Kennedy appeared calm and composed. Voters must have agreed because Mr. Kennedy went on to win the election. The rest, as they say, is history. 

I remember watching that debate. I grew up in a Republican household, but something began to shift in me that evening. Along with many other young people, I began to gravitate toward Kennedy. I liked his energy, his boyish charm, even his Boston accent. I suppose you could say that evening was the beginning of my own political journey, one that eventually took me into the Peace Corps, one of JFK’s signature programs, and, a few years later, to work with Sargent Shriver (a Kennedy in-law) at Special Olympics. 

But politics isn’t the point here. Time is. Every once in a while, I feel the need to stop and take stock of all the events that have happened in my lifetime: that first debate, the Cuban missile crisis, President Kennedy’s assassination, two Arab-Israeli wars, the Vietnam War and the attendant social upheaval of the 60s, the Civil Rights movement, two more assassinations: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, the moon landing, Watergate, the Camp David Accords, the Iranian hostage crisis, Iran-Contra, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Gulf War, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan….I could go on, but I’m getting war-weary, and by now, you get the point. 

History began as oral tradition, a string of stories passed down the generational chain on a human continuum. But that’s changing, or maybe I should say, that has changed. Continuous history has been replaced by discreet history, random events that may or may not have any connectivity. Events that were very real to me—the Kennedy-Nixon debate, for example—are relics of a past that has little or no meaning to subsequent generations. The moon landing that so captivated me as a college student in 1969 might as well have taken place in aboriginal dreamtime as far as today’s college students are concerned. It boggles my mind.

I’ve recently returned to work in an interim capacity at a school where I once worked for more than twenty years while that school conducts a national search to fill an unexpected vacancy. It’s a temporary change of lifestyle for me, but it affords me the opportunity to experience this rapidly changing world through the eyes of students growing up in the post-Covid generation. It seems to me that they don’t have any use for the connectivity that I once needed and continue to need. They seem to inherently accept, comprehend, and use the randomness and speed of current technology in a way that is, to say the least, foreign to me. History gets lost in the shuffle. Here’s a silly example: a friend of mine who teaches high school geometry recently used a Michael Jordan leap to illustrate a parabola. While his students immediately understood the discreet mathematical principles of the parabola, one asked, “Who’s Michael Jordan?” My teacher friend was thunderstruck; so am I.

The debate I watched all those years ago on a small black-and-white television set, the one that changed the course of my life, is now just a footnote to history. The pace of the world is accelerating at warp speed, and seminal events that occurred in my lifetime are now relics gathering dust in the basement of the Smithsonian.

Without realizing it, I’ve become a dinosaur. I’m watching out for asteroids.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His new novel “This Salted Soil,” a new children’s book, “The Ballad of Poochie McVay,” and two collections of essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”), are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is Musingjamie.net.

 

   

It’s all about the light; it always has been. Take last Saturday, for example: it was a gorgeous day; the temperature was delightful, half way between hot and chilly, almost no humidity. There was a gentle breeze across the cheek of the river and not a cloud in the sky or a care in the world. It was all too good to be true, and that’s when it hit me: it WAS too good to be true. Lovely as the day was, the light was flat. There was no contrast, no art, no texture to the light, no luminosity or glow, and boy-oh-boy, how I love glow!

Glow provides depth. Glow is a fleeting moment. Glow makes a memory. Glow is not fact; it is feeling, emotion, sensation. Glow radiates. Other qualities of light may play with our senses—shadows, for example—but glow makes its presence known gently. It doesn’t bang down the door; it taps us on the shoulder and whispers, “Look!”

Water sparkles. Stars twinkle. Candles flicker. Shoes might shine, but they never glow. Glow is ephemeral; it can be as tiny as the blink of a firefly’s tail light or as grand as a sunset. Glow is not a burning log on the fire; it is the ember in the grate. It’s an afterthought, a lingering reflection of glory.

Glow is a secret. It’s light within, radiating out. The masters of chiaroscuro knew how to render it, how to create luminosity in their works of art. They might use layers of transparent paint or glazes, or they would paint a hard edge around a face or an object to create a glowing effect, or they might even blur colors together to create an appearance of reflected light. The effect was stunning because it somehow captured all the light we could not see.

Glow is fire without flame. It is indirect, refracted light. The first time I saw Renoir’s “Luncheon of the Boating Party,” I was transfixed, not by the graceful interaction of the subjects, not by the table laden with fruit and wine, not even by the shaggy little dog on the lap of the woman who would later become Renoir’s wife. What caught my attention was the hand-rolled cigarette in the right hand of the man in the foreground; not the cigarette itself, but by the glowing ash at its tip. It was alive with light, warm to the touch, the very breath of life itself, the detail that made the painting come alive for me. It wasn’t more than a minuscule drop of paint from the artist’s finest brush, but, to me, it captured the holy glow of the entire universe.

Maybe we all live in the glow of details, a glow that captures something primeval in each of us and helps us remember how wonderful life can be. Cloudless, sunny days are truly gifts to treasure, and I am thankful for them. But the moments that truly stand out in my mind’s eye are the scenes that seem to glow, lit from within by some serene, divine light that surpasses all human understanding.

I think you know the ones I mean.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His new novel “This Salted Soil,” a new children’s book, “The Ballad of Poochie McVay,” and two collections of essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”), are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is Musingjamie.net.

 

 

On one of the last Sundays of summer, my wife and I treated ourselves to lunch in Annapolis at one of the chic restaurants lining Ego Alley. In case you don’t recognize that name, Ego Alley is a narrow dead-end watery defile off of Spa Creek which the local boating crowd like to use as their favorite see-and-be-seen parade route down into the heart of “Naptown.”  It does make for great theater and the perfect setting for all types of people and boat watching. And while the name ‘Ego Alley’ may sound just a touch snide, I must admit that on that particular delightfully sunny-but-cool afternoon, it was indeed a wonderful place to sit and have lunch, watching the water taxis come and go while an endless queue of elegant boats with their suitably attired captains and crew motored back and forth on their way to nowhere in particular.  

After our lunch, my wife and I went for a stroll along the Annapolis waterfront. There were lots of people out and about enjoying the weather, ogling the boats, taking selfies and snapshots with their cell phones. I watched a gaggle of midshipmen all in their summer whites, covers off, sitting on a wall, eating ice cream. I saw children playing in and around the enchanting Alex Haley memorial statuary down at the foot of City Dock. There were shops and restaurants galore, but I have to say, the star of the show was a beautiful behemoth of a yacht that was tied up along the wharf taking up seven slips. I wondered how the captain of that vessel would ever be able to turn around and extract himself from his prime parking spot on Ego Alley.

I readily admit that I’m not a boater, but I count myself fortunate because I have several good friends who are both dedicated boaters and generous skippers. I’m always happy to go cruising with them, in part because I enjoy their company as much as I love being on the water, and also because I’m endlessly fascinated by everything that goes into cruising: the critical marine skills and knowledge, the high-tech gadgets and paraphernalia, fluency in the special nomenclature of lines and knots, the weather acumen, and, perhaps most importantly, the conscientious provisioning that anticipates the every need of all the hands on board. My skippers and their first mates are pros at provisioning!

And I have to acknowledge another truth about boating: it’s not for fools like me who have holes in their pockets. Operating a boat is expensive: there are repairs and maintenance, fuel, dockage fees, insurance, provisions and more provisions. I’m guessing that the costs of owning and operating a boat might have been why a former captain once told me, “the two best days I had on my boat were the day I bought it and the day I sold it.” That’s all the more reason to say, “God bless my FWB,” my ‘friends with boats.’

Maybe you think that the name “Ego Alley” implies a certain “if you’ve got it, flaunt it” perspective on boating, but I’m giving my boating friends and all you other skippers out there a pass on that. This I believe: boaters love the water, and if they choose to share that love with other boaters or mere spectators by cruising up and down Ego Alley, then so be it. I’m happy to salute you from shore!

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His new novel “This Salted Soil,” a new children’s book, “The Ballad of Poochie McVay,” and two collections of essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”), are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is Musingjamie.net.

 

It just so happens that yesterday was my birthday. When you’re little, birthdays are all about cakes and candles, parties, presents and friends. But when you’re older, or just old (75 years old, to be exact), birthdays are for taking stock, for remembering, for saying you’re sorry and for giving thanks. They’re bittersweet. You look over your shoulder at all the milestones you’ve passed; you wonder how many more you’ll touch as you walk by. The cake doesn’t much matter anymore; it’s just empty calories.

Retrospection doesn’t come easily to me; I tend to be a creature of the moment. But in the wee hours of the morning when I’m lying awake, I find myself looking back at the people and the places who have made an impression on my life. There are both regrets and gratitudes, paths I’m glad I took, and intersections where I made a wrong turn. But yet, here I am, alive and still kicking, surrounded by good friends and caring family members who wished me well yesterday and meant it.

I’m a lucky man. I have a loving wife. I have found a wonderful place to live. I have meaningful work. My health is reasonably good. No one can foretell the future, but when I look ahead, the skies are, for the most part, clear, and I will make the best of the days I have remaining.

I’m currently reading James A. Michener’s tome on Afghanistan, “Caravans.” It’s one of his typical epics, but it has taken me back to a place and time that were unique in my own experience. I was working on the staff of the Peace Corps, and had been assigned temporary duty for a few weeks in Afghanistan. It was in January of either 1975 or 1976—I’m fuzzy on that detail—but I remember the biting cold, the deep snow on the streets of Kabul, the towering peaks of the Hindu Kush, and the singsong cries of the snow shovelers. One day, another staff member and I had to go to Jalalabad, a city near the border of Pakistan, which was some four rough-road hours from Kabul. On the way, we stopped to let the engine of our vehicle cool, and I wandered up a nearby hill to survey the landscape. At the summit, there wasn’t much to see, but I was suddenly overcome with a feeling that I was as far away from everyone I loved and everything I knew as I could be, and that if I took just one step in any direction, I would either fall off the edge of the earth or be one step closer to home. I was at the end of my tether.

Maybe that’s how I’m feeling today, off on another hilltop, surveying the terrain below wondering what lies ahead. The difference, of course, is that I’m not in Afghanistan. I’m where I belong and tonight, I’ll sleep safe and warm in my own bed.

There’s just one other thing to add: this week, I’m returning to the school where I worked for twenty-two years to serve for one semester in an interim capacity while the school conducts a national search to fill an unexpected vacancy. Much in the landscape of my former profession (college counseling) and on the actual campus of the school (Landon) has changed in the eight intervening years, and I’m both excited and a little nervous at this opportunity. But then I remember coming down from that hilltop in Afghanistan and continuing on with my journey. There was so much more that lay ahead, one step at a time.

And, in the familiar words of that old song, “I think to myself, what a wonderful world!”

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His new novel “This Salted Soil,” a new children’s book, “The Ballad of Poochie McVay,” and two collections of essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”), are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is Musingjamie.net.

 

At the risk of alienating almost the entire population of the state of Maryland and many of my Sassenach friends, I have a confession to make: I’m not a devotee of picking crabs. I understand the allure: the chatting, the cold beer, the bite of Old Bay, even the crab meat itself, but to this Maryland Outlander, the juice just isn’t worth the squeeze. Don’t get me wrong: I like a good crab cake as much as anyone, but when it comes to picking crabs, I’m more like Chance, Peter Sellers’ character in the film Being There: “I like to watch.”

This past weekend, we had family visitors who gave up the Free State for the Upper West Side of New York City long ago. Word was that one of them—my brother-in-law—was craving some crabs and rockfish, and that was all the excuse my wife needed to organize a family crab feast. Sister Number One and her Outlaw husband supplied all the crustaceans (they have a very productive dock) and the rockfish. Other family and friends brought everything else we needed to scratch the crab itch: corn on the cob, cole slaw, chips and onion dip, cucumber, feta and tomato salad, and a mixed berry pie that put the exclamation point on the feast. The beer and sodas were ice-cold, not to mention the champagne and wine. Me? Just some fried chicken from the RoFo, thank you very much.

Even the weather cooperated: the afternoon was warm but not scorching, there was a cooling breeze, and—thank God—the humidity was low: just right for the tympani of banging mallets and the ebb and flow of conversation. (In this family, there’s a lot more flow than ebb in the conversation, but you knew that!) The detritus mounted but never overflowed. As for the bottles and cans, let’s just say we did our part for the town’s new recycling center.

As the evening wore on, we noticed the cicadas were chatting just as loudly as we were and that the daylight seemed to slip away earlier than usual. That didn’t stop the party. It simply moved from the backyard to the front porch where the usual suspects wandered by and stopped in for a chat or a sip or two. I’ve learned there’s no way I can keep up with this crew so I bowed out early, but the professionals among us carried on until midnight and beyond. They know how to keep a good thing going. When she finally came upstairs to bed, my wife told me it was the best night of the summer, and I believed her.

There’s always something more to say about this family, but this much is true: they’re always up to the clean-up task. There were tables and chairs to stow, recycling to separate, trash and more trash to bag, but many hands made light work, and when the sun rose on the morning-after, you could hardly tell that a battle had been fought on this field the previous day.

Today, the New Yorkers will return home and the house will seem a bit empty. But memories don’t take up much room in the storage bins of our minds. Maybe one of these days. I’ll take Lady Macbeth’s advice and “screw my courage to the sticking place” and dive in to a heap of crabs smothered in Old Bay, but until then, I’m content to keep score from the sidelines. “Who’s winning?” you ask. We are.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His new novel “This Salted Soil,” a new children’s book, “The Ballad of Poochie McVay,” and two collections of essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”), are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is Musingjamie.net.

We’re all broken in one way or another. A broken bone here, a broken heart there. Maybe we know someone whose spirit is broken. Whether we’re chipped, cracked, or smashed to pieces, each one of us is flawed in some way, shape or form. Life is rarely lived in the perfect but, if we’re very fortunate, it can still be lived in recovery and repair. 

Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer that has been mixed with dusted gold. The areas of repair are not hidden or disguised. In fact, an object’s very  brokenness is enhanced, emphasized and strengthened through the art of kintsugi. In kintsugi, what was damaged becomes illuminated, and both the damage and the repair become part of that object’s history. But kintsugi is more than just the artful repair of something broken. It is a manifestation of the philosophy that embraces the imperfect. In Japanese culture, an object that is broken, cracked or even shows the inevitable scars of age is venerated; its fault lines are the very proof of its true value, and therefore worthy of loving and artful restoration.

Kintsugi is also related to the Japanese philosophy of ‘mushin’ which encompasses the concepts of non-attachment, acceptance of change, and fate as inherent aspects of human life. It’s a sensitive, even poignant, way of looking at the world, one grounded in a deep and abiding understanding of how fragile life really is.

Sometimes, when I can’t sleep at night, I go over the imperfections in my own life, not to dwell on them, but to learn from them, to apply a little kintsugi to my own chips and cracks. I’d like to think that some artisan might come along to make me whole again, even enhance my own value, but maybe that artisan doesn’t exist. Or maybe I am that artisan.

I think about parents who have lost children. Children who have lost a parent. Siblings who have lost siblings. Lovers who have lost each other; friends who have lost friends. Those chips and cracks seem irreparable to me, but maybe I’m too attached; maybe I can’t see the beauty that comes with repair. 

Here’s the thing: imperfection is all around us. It is in us. And yet, we continue to believe in perfection, that everything comes right in the end, that there is no brokenness. But stop for a minute. Ask the people in Ukraine. Ask the mother who loses her son to gun violence. Ask the family who has been evicted from their apartment because they can’t pay the rent this month, or the immigrant who has walked a thousand miles with a baby on her hip only to be turned away at the border. Where is the artisan who will repair their brokenness, the one who will fill the cracks in their lives with a lacquer mixed with gold dust and make everything whole again and, not only whole, but more beautiful than before?

In Japanese, the word ‘kinstsugi’ means ‘golden repair.’ I’d like to think that concept refers as much to people as it does to broken pottery. I don’t know about you, but my own chips and cracks need a little golden repair from time to time. Don’t get me wrong: my personal vicissitudes are bad enough, but given all that I’ve been through, I’m one of the lucky ones. I’m learning to accept my fragility, to be resilient, to take pride in my own imperfections and clumsy repairs. 

Can you?

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine.  His new novel “This Salted Soil,” a new children’s book, “The Ballad of Poochie McVay,” and two collections of essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”), are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is Musingjamie.net.

 

 

 

When it comes to summer, some like it hot. “The hotter, the better,” those folk say, smiling through their sweat and sunburn. I’m not one of them. I bless the day Willis Carrier was born. He was the genius who designed the first air conditioning system in 1902, launching an industry that would change the way we live, work, and play.

Kudos also to Frederick Jones, an African-American mechanical engineer who was the brains behind the science of mobile refrigeration. Without Mr. Jones’ patents and inventions, we might still be using ice and salt to preserve our food. Don’t get me wrong: over my years on the beach, I’ve learned that a lot of ice goes a little way, but in the dog days of summer, ice—even Yeti ice—eventually becomes just another sad puddle of water at the bottom of the cooler that leaves that last few submerged cans of beer or soda more lukewarm than ice-cold.

Some folks who live in hot climates believe in eating hot food—spicy food—because it makes you sweat, and, because sweat evaporates quickly on dry days, you feel cooler quicker. On humid days, however, you’re out of luck; the air is already saturated with water so the cooling effect of sweat is much less noticeable.

In the Middle East, wind towers have been cooling hot folk for centuries. The technology is simple and inexpensive: wind towers create downdrafts and cross-ventilation, two traditional methods of cooling a home in the days before electricity. Modern power grids can get overloaded and fail, but not wind towers; they’ll keep on producing cool, fresh air as long as the wind blows. Many traditional homes in the Middle East also have lattice windows that promote air flow, provide shade, and afford a modest and private view of crowded, public spaces.   

But in the arts, it’s a bit of a different story because, well, some do like it hot. Billy Wilders’ eponymous film is a classic of American comedy, one of the first films selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” While it would probably be banned in Florida today, when it premiered in 1959, “Some Like It Hot” told the story of two zany musicians (Jack Lemon and Tony Curtis) who disguise themselves as women to escape from gangsters whom they witnessed committing a crime. When each one of them falls for a bombshell vocalist and ukulele player (Marilyn Monroe, of course), all manner of mayhem ensures.

Finally, in poetry, some like it both hot and cold. In “Fire and Ice,” Robert Frost uses fire as a metaphor for burning desire while ice is a metaphor for hatred, the yin and yang of human emotions, two equally destructive forces that each have the potential to end civilization:

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great.
And would suffice.
Hot or cold: it’s up to you

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine.

His new novel “This Salted Soil,” a new children’s book, “The Ballad of Poochie McVay,” and two collections of essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”), are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is Musingjamie.net.

 

Like the swallows that return to Capistrano every year, our clan has once again descended on Rehoboth. The count varies day-by-day, but in this year’s migration, we’ll round off the roster to somewhere around fifty. Mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, aunts and uncles, cousins and more cousins, all spread out over three generations and installed in five separate houses. It’s the show that never ends.

Memories may differ, but the general consensus is that this circus has been reuniting to Rehoboth in the second week of August for at least forty years. There was a time when the show stayed in town for two weeks, but a few years ago, we reduced the gathering just one week due to too many scheduling conflicts. That doesn’t mean we do less now, it just means we pack more into our days and nights. We make our time here count.

In my years with this traveling circus, I’ve watched toddlers turn into teenagers. There have been many happy additions to the family circle, and one or two deletions, I’m sad to say. But that’s life. What has never changed are the bonds that hold this boisterous family together—bonds of love and affection that transcend all age and gender differences, occasional squabbles, and even political persuasions. In this day and age, that’s saying a lot!

The birds who return to nest in the eaves of the San Juan Mission in Capistrano, California have been doing so for centuries. The Mission sits between two rivers, so it’s an ideal spot for the birds—cliff swallows—to raise their young. Their move-in day is in mid-March. They spend the next six months building nests, hatching eggs, and fledging their babies. Near the end of October, the swallows will swirl into the sky and head off to their wintering grounds in Goya, Argentina, thousands of miles away. 

A few years ago, there was a restoration project on the grounds of the mission, and many of the swallows’ delicate mud nests were damaged or removed. (The real estate market can be cruel like that; just ask my wife!) Thankfully, the interruption was only temporary. Because there was some loss of habitat, there aren’t as many swallows as there used to be, but Swallows Day is back on the Capistrano calendar. By the way, you’ll need a ticket.

The swallows return to Capistrano year after year because they share a strong homing instinct. So do we. While our commute is not as long, and the duration of our stay is shorter, we have our own morning and evening rituals. Mornings are for breakfast and sun-screening; evenings are for gatherings around separate family tables with the option of some shared nightcaps for the younger bucks and does. In between, there are countless hours dedicated to beaching. Our army rolls onto the beach around 10, and decamps under umbrellas and in beach chairs, arranged in lines in the morning and in one great circle as the day progresses. There is a screened tent for napping babies, and strategically positioned towels for adult naps. There are enough buckets and shovels for everyone, even a large plastic swimming pool which the kids fill with sea water and sand. Frisbees and footballs fly; the Can-Jam game seems to have replaced the volleyball net as the adult game of choice, probably because it’s hard to hold a cold beer and play volleyball at the same time. As the sun goes down, there may be a surf rod or two pressed into service; fortunately, family dinners do not depend on what is caught or not caught, as the case may be. 

On one evening, we regather on the beach in force, showered and refreshed. Buffet tables are set up and a scrumptious feast ensues. There’s appropriate kid fare and grown-up fare; plenty for all. As day fades, the waves die down and peace settles in like a happy, tired puppy. I look around and I thank my lucky stars that I’m one of these swallows.

I’ll be right back.

 

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His new novel “This Salted Soil,” a new children’s book, “The Ballad of Poochie McVay,” and two collections of essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”), are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is Musingjamie.net.

 

If you don’t know by now, let me remind you: our house is very small; that’s why we named it ‘Standing Room Only.’ But it lives large, and no single room lives larger than our front porch. We take our morning coffee there; in the afternoon, you can find us in our accustomed chairs, one of us always ready to chat. At cocktail hour, we entertain our friends on the porch. and in the quiet of the evening, we’re likely to have a last glass of wine before bed: she on her swing, me in my porch rocker. We joke that someday should we ever decide to sell Standing Room Only, the porch will not convey.

In his poem Mending Wall, Robert Frost puts it plainly: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” I wonder what he would have to say about a front porch. It seems to me to be the face of our house, the smile that greets us when we return home from a day away, or the welcome we give to friends and strangers alike. We’ve had artists request our permission to paint it. Tourists often stop to admire it. I’m not bragging; this isn’t about me or us or anything we’ve done. It’s about what an architect or builder thoughtfully added to a small cottage built more than 130 years ago. 

Now, I won’t lie. We live in a wood house and maintenance is always an issue. Two years ago, with the blessing of the Maryland Historic Trust, we replaced the tin roof that covers the porch, but weather is weather and people are people so rain gets in, spills happen. But the porch never complains. We sweep it in the morning, remove its clutter every night. It sails on and on, ready for whatever or whoever comes next.

Sometimes, I wonder what the world must think of us: “There they are again, just sitting on their porch. Don’t they ever do anything?” Well, just so you know, the porch often doubles as an office. I like to write there, and my realtor wife is likely doing some research or closing a deal from the porch. We just look like we’re idling, but we’re really busy. Just ask the porch.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison is an accomplished American essayist who knows her way around a good phrase or two. She once wrote that “porches are America’s lost rooms.” Maybe to some, Ms. Harrison, but ours isn’t lost; it’s more than found! Ray Bradbury, better known for his wonderful science fiction, was on to something closer to home when he wrote that “heaven is a house with porch lights.” But my favorite porch quote is from Rebecca Wells: “I want to lay up like that, to float unstructured, without ambition or anxiety. I want to inhabit my life like a porch.” Yes!

I think I mentioned that last week, we had family visiting us in town. Well, on Saturday night, there we all were on the porch: laughing, chatting, reminiscing, planning. The porch is a good place for any or all of those activities. It wraps its arms around us, keeps us safe. It’s always there when we need it. It keeps our secrets. 

Our porch defines us much more than we define it, and that’s exactly how it should be. So, if you should happen to need me, now you know where to find me.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His new novel “This Salted Soil,” a new children’s book, “The Ballad of Poochie McVay,” and two collections of essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”), are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is Musingjamie.net.