Homesick

When I was a kid, we used to spend time on Pender Island every summer. My family had a property there that had been passed down for generations: my great-grandfather lived there, at the turn of the century, I think; and my grandfather, and his siblings after him; and my mother, aunts and uncles, too, had all spent their childhoods there before me (and before my siblings, and all nineteen of my younger first cousins). Once a year, the whole lot of us would spend a weekend there together, camping on the lawn. We called it The Reunion.


The property was gorgeous. Maybe I'm biased, but everyone who saw it said so. When I was really small, it was still part of a working farm, with cow fields and a big rambling barn; but, for most of my memory, "Pender" has always been just a few acres on a grassy hill, running down toward the ocean. The property lay on the corner of a bay (called, incidentally, Brackett Bay, after my family), so there was a beach on two sides. Across the bay there was a marina, with lots of docks full of sailboats, a pub, a store that sold ice cream, and an outdoor swimming pool, where we could swim all day for $2.00 if the ocean was too cold (which it was). At night you could hear the music and laughter from the pub coming clear across the water, but we never minded. We were making noise and laughter of our own.

The Cabin

The bees were always humming in the clover and the daisies, and my grandma would fret a little, telling the smaller cousins to be mindful of playing barefoot. We'd pitch our tents in the shade of the ancient, gnarled fruit trees, which I called the Orchard. A country driveway ran down to the Cabin, where my Great-uncle Lyall would stay, and all the way to the Big House on the corner cliff, where my Great-aunt Mildred lived. To the right, a stone-slab staircase led into the water at high tide, and a wooden bridge led to the wharf, where we fished; and all along the front was a rocky beach, facing east. There was an old wooden gate that closed with a peg, and all around it grew periwinkles and sweet-peas, and daffodils in the spring. The beach was littered with bleached driftwood, and faced the sunrise and the full moon.

The Dock

I talk about the property in the past tense because it isn't ours anymore. When my great-aunt Mildred died, there was a technical problem with her will, so the property was sold last year, to general heartbreak. My grandfather, great-uncle, mother, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins: everyone, I think, mourned deeply the day we lost Pender.

Today, I am thinning grapes in New Zealand, but my heart is on Pender.

The sun is shining through the leaves of the grapevine; I can hear silence and the metallic sound of the shears going snip, snip: I am counting my bunches, but I am remembering the sea-life on the side of the dock, under the water. I remember the starfish, bright purple, all twisted together so they no longer resembled stars. When you touched them they were scaly and hard. There were clumps of algae and shiny black mussels, and anemones of all colours, which we would use as worms for fishing. My mother taught us how to do that, I think.

The thing I will miss the most about Pender is how happy it made my mother to be there, surrounded by her cousins and uncles, siblings and children, nieces and nephews and parents. She would wander on the beach, "beach-combing," she said, maybe thinking about her childhood as she walked, looking for arrowheads or bits of china. In those moments her name suited her best: Adrienne, "Of the Sea."

It made my grandpa happy too. He would lay the crab traps, to the especial excitement of all the little boys. We would watch him pulling up the ropes, his face checkered under his shady straw hat, his brown hands squeezing the water out a little, so that it fell, in shining drops, back into the black ocean. Eventually, deep down, you could see a murky shape coming up; slowly, the trap emerged from the depths until it was suddenly out, with a whoosh of escaping water, and Grandpa set it matter-of-factly onto the dock, full of moving, angry, rust-coloured crabs.

My drawing of a rock crab

Once, when my father pulled up the trap, there was nothing in it but an enormous sea-star with more than twenty legs. It was soft and defenseless had thousands of waving tentacles, and my dad threw it like a Frisbee as far as he could back into the ocean.

"Alieda!" my boss barks at me. I am brought to reality, and turn.

"Yeah?"

"Why do you have," he looks at my leg. "A starfish tattoo?"

"Um," I falter. "On the island where I grew up, the beaches are covered in these purple starfish." I stop and he waits expectantly, but there is really nothing else to say.

"So it's your national sea animal!" he yells.

"Yeah," I say. "I guess so."

"Nice!" he yells and keeps walking.

One, two, three, four, five, six. Snip, snip.

I remember that there used to be an abandoned fishing boat in the bay, half-sunken, half-afloat, the paint peeling and the green of the ocean seeping into the wood. It was called the Charmer, which we thought funny, my siblings and I, because it wasn't charming at all. It was hideous and a little scary. We thought that it might be haunted, actually, since we often heard strange noises coming from it. The noises were inexplicable. They were not the creakings of an old, abandoned boat, but deliberate, alive sounds. Some thing lived in that boat. Maybe something sinister.

We dared each other to swim over to the boat and touch it, but no one ever would.

One day, while I was reading in the Orchard, someone resolutely paddled the canoe over to the haunted boat, and discovered, not a ghost, but a family of sea otters living in it.

Painting of the Haunted Boat

 

My grandma laughed when we told her about the otters and said "Oh! My gull!" She always said gull instead of God, like a seagull. My gull.

My grandma used to make us treasure hunts. She would print out clues on coloured slips of paper, one clue leading to another, and all the cousins would race from one to another, anticipating the end of the treasure hunt. We would usually let a few of the younger ones find a clue, and the older ones would read it out loud.

Finally we would get to the last clue: "X Marks The Spot." and we'd race to the beach, where there was, inevitably, a shovel plunged into the sand in the middle of a giant X. My brother would start digging and soon, he'd hit something solid. The little ones were too impatient to wait for the shovel and they'd leap into the hole, scrabbling with their hands, pulling at the treasure chest.

It was a real treasure chest too. It was rounded on top and had metal spines holding it together. Grandma would fill it with candy, all different kinds.

Wait.

Someone is throwing grapes at me.

For awhile now I've been suspicious, but now I'm sure. They sting a little, and as the next one hits my leg I can see it's my boss. He grins when I look over and I feel a little lost. What is he doing? Is he like, flirting with me? I smile at him, more confused than friendly, and finish my row. Now the boss is playing rock, paper, scissors with one of the English boys. The loser has to do five push-ups. The boss loses and he does his five push-ups quickly, clapping in between to show he's really strong, or something. Next he systematically approaches every guy, to see who will do five push-ups.

When it's my turn, I tell him I can't do push-ups. He tells me I can do five star-jumps instead, but I think he's kidding so I say no thanks.

One, two, three, four, five, six. Snip, snip.

I remember the purple phosphorescence in the water at night, and the full moon rising over us. At night we would play games in the lantern-light, cards or dice, and moths would flap around our ears, searching for their mate, and we would eat chips out of big plastic bowls. Later, we would lie in the darkness and watch for shooting stars, and sometimes there would be fireworks at the marina. In the morning, there would be an enormous pancake breakfast for everyone, with sausages and coffee.

One morning, when we were fishing, there was an enormous bald eagle watching us from the top of a cedar tree. We were only catching little perch and throwing them back, but they would always be a little dazed from being out of the water too long, and they would sort of float there for a minute. I remember we would think, Oh no, this one's dead-- but then it would seem to blink and shake itself down into the water.

Anyway this bald eagle was watching and waiting for that moment. And someone threw his fish back, and suddenly the shadow of the eagle blocked the sun and it dove down to grab that fish and skim it out of the water.

At least three or four times we fed that eagle that way.

"Fly, birdies!" screams the boss, laughing manically, and a girl screams.

He's found a birds' nest, and he kills the chicks one by one, stepping on them. Some of the boys laugh. I feel a little sick.

A little while later I think I can hear the distressed cries of the parent bird returning to the nest.

I try to think about Pender, but the boss has put on loud music and it has reached 39.C. I have been working for five hours without a break and my back hurts.

It's funny, I've been here in New Zealand for five months now, but I haven't really felt homesick like I do today. Sure, I've missed my friends, I've missed walking downtown and my family, my job and my apartment, but not really. Not like I miss Pender. Not like I miss those golden, green summer days of my childhood, and my grandfather's twinkling blue eyes, and my mother's happiness, and my grandma saying "Oh! My gull." I miss those sweet-peas growing wild and tangled over the gate, and the rutted driveway, and the dilapidated buildings of the old farm, where we would find strange rusted tools, wagon wheels, tractors, sleeping bats, an old carriage and once, a buck deer, sleeping in a patch of sun. I miss the blackberries on the side of the road and walking down to the store to buy an ice-cream. I miss the excitement of the early morning ferry, the sunshine glancing off the water, each of us straining near the front of the boat saying, "There it is! There's Pender!" as soon as we saw an island with the right shape.

I am here in New Zealand, and I am having the time of my life.

But today, even though I guess it's gone now, I am sure homesick for Pender.

The Gate