Sizing up Summer From My Chair By the Window

Out of the cool evening mist, one thing above all comes into focus.

The spinny chair I’m sitting in smells a bit musty, as if the chronically damp air has decided to take up residence in the brown gingham check slipcover that my mother had made for this thing years ago. Unfortunately, I can’t take the slipcover off, because the fabric underneath it is a style I’d call Vintage Dentist Office, a dark navy and maroon paisley-ish thing. Scratchy, too.

My nose is beginning to twitch, but maybe that’s from the scent of skunk wafting in through the open window, dark with evening. I should move to another chair, but this one, in addition to spinning and having a delightfully nostalgic summer-camp three-days-on-the clothesline odor, is unique. If I take the back support cushion out, I can climb in, scootch far enough back to tuck my feet up underneath me, and sit cross-legged or side-saddled with enough breadth to balance my computer on my lap. It’s a mini-fort, a comfortable Cancer-the-crab shell, my ultimate writing chair.

I spin the chair 180 degrees from its normal position, where it completes our motley collection of living room furniture, clustered around an old pine chest in front of the brick fireplace. Now I am facing one of the front windows and can feel the chilly mist that’s crept up stealthily from the field and through the tattered window screen. Since our little Cape Cod house sits perched at the top of a long gentle slope, I feel a bit like I’m on the bow of a boat. No stars to navigate by tonight, though. Just a few lightning bugs.

I wonder what the deer will eat tonight. Last night, frustrated I guess by the go-away-deer spray I used on the Limelight and Ruby Slippers hydrangeas, they decided to lean over a chicken-wire fence and eat a dozen or so fresh rose buds off of my Julia Child rose. That was the appetizer.

Then they continued on down the hill to the hoop house, where, based on the scuffle of hoof prints in the wood chips outside the front door, there was obviously a cervid conclave, a not-so-secret deer meeting to discuss what to eat next.

The viburnum hedge was a possibility, but someone mentioned that the leaves were kind of sour, so that idea was tossed. There was the Joe Pye weed along the edge of the woods, but they’d already eaten so much of it that, like The Giving Tree, there was nothing left for the poor Joe Pye weed to give.

That’s it then, the chief buck said, we’re going for the dahlias out back behind the hoop house. There were only four plants so they had to take turns munching the stems down. Fortunately, the rest of the dahlias are either inside the hoop house or behind the 8-foot fence around the big garden.

But I have no doubt that the conclave will one night take up the possibility of breaching the 8-foot fence. They will elect someone to the high office of gate crasher and give it a go.

My husband is in the kitchen doing the dishes with his earbuds on, singing off tune.

Farmer’s absence is acute, as always.

My wooden bowl of chocolate chips is here, of course — on the chest between the windows, with a stack of home books and an Ansel Adams biography, a framed wedding photo, a bowl of dried celosia buds from last summer and a bowl containing sand dollars, a pinecone, and a wasp’s nest. Also: paper pub coasters my husband collected in Australia on a trip with his son eight years ago. One with my Emma Bridgewater potting shed mug filled with hot Tazo passion tea on it.

A wooden milking stool next to me has on it a stack of magazines and catalogues – mostly Dutch bulb catalogues. It’s time to order tulip bulbs already. West Elm and Garnet Hill for living room furniture fantasizing. And Boden, for a spiffy dress or splashy blouse I have no use for in my rural life.

I hear the little screech owls trilling and whining. They trill when talking to their mate, and whine to protect their territory. We hear mostly whining in the early evening, and trilling around midnight.

From the safety of my armchair I can look back at the week – this particular week – with gratitude and satisfaction, knowing I was present for the people I wanted to be present for without getting anxious about my work deadlines and garden work.

I think I am managing to balance things fairly well this summer, better than most. I managed to have friends over for dinner one night, I met friends at a book signing on Tuesday, I had lunch with a good friend to celebrate her retirement, and I had another friend and her husband over for a garden tour.

I developed two new recipes for Cook the Vineyard, made up (and sold!) my first flower bouquets of the season. And worked on the August edition of the publication I edit called the Vine, which goes to the printer on Thursday. (We leave 6 a.m. Friday morning to drive to Delaware to celebrate Dad’s 95^th birthday.)

My favorite part about editing (other than moving paragraphs around) is going down rabbit holes to fact-check and gather background information. Yesterday afternoon (at the desk proper, not from the armchair) I was editing an inspiring interview with distinguished pastor Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, who will deliver his annual sermon at Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs on August 3.

In researching Pastor Moss’s background, I came across a short film he produced about his grandfather’s struggles to vote in the South in the 1940s. It was incredibly moving, so I’ve dropped it in below (at the end of the newsletter) in case you’ve got 14 minutes to spare.

As I sit here in the comfy chair thinking back over the week, it’s that film that keeps cropping up in my viewfinder, crowding out the time with friends, the iced tea and the coffee and the ice cream; my friend Polly’s voice on the radio; the flowers and shell peas I picked; the aphids on the sweet peas I despaired; the marinated squid I grilled; the two new zucchini recipes I developed; the texts and the emails; the agonizing reports from Texas and the resurfacing of camp memories; the John LeCarré book (Our Game) that refuses to finish; the photography exhibit opening I missed; the charley horses in my calves; my friend Kay’s story about her dog Wally; my husband’s golf score; a conversation about affordable housing; chatting with my sister; making up a special birthday card for Dad on Shutterfly; the set of photo cards my friend Liz gave me; the beautiful cookies Charlene baked; the dragonfly in the hoop house; the honeybees in the poppies; the thick tangle of field peas in the big garden; the pile of manure drifting after the deluge; the two bunnies playing hide and seek; the humidity and my damp hair on the back of my neck; the traffic at Five Corners; the hug from my friend Heidi at the farmers’ market. A lot goes on in a week. In a day, an hour, a minute.

But time stands still in the armchair. Out of the mist, events and conversations from the week emerge and fade, emerge and fade, while one thing comes into sharp focus – a thing that begs revisiting and requires synthesizing. This film for me was that. 💚