A New Kind of Country by Dorothy Gilman

Author:Dorothy Gilman [Gilman, Dorothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2020-06-29T00:00:00+00:00

10

Arrivals and Departures/Change

I went back to New Jersey that first Christmas; the lease on the apartment wouldn’t expire for several more months and Christopher was living there while he commuted to classes in New York. It seemed easier for me to leave Nova Scotia than for both sons to come to East Tumbril. No, I’ll take that back: I didn’t want to force my new lifestyle on them too early, and for this holiday season. I wasn’t sure yet what they would do with East Tumbril.

I arrived exhilarated by the crowds, lights, and noises, and an hour later Jonathan arrived, too. Christopher has pointed out that we always talk feverishly on the first and last evenings that we’re together, and between these two points of reference go our separate ways. And this is true: tomorrow Kit will be closeted in his room working over a poem, and Jonathan will be off seeing his old friends from high school, and I, since I arrived, have been politely ignoring the piles of dirty clothes I see in their bedroom, the grease in the kitchen sink and in artistic spatter patterns on the counter: that is what I will be doing tomorrow. But this is First Evening and Kit is on his feet imitating someone he’s recently met—he’s a wonderful mimic—and Jonathan is laughing as he brings out Cokes from the refrigerator: his turn will come next. Jonathan has said, after visiting other families, that we are the only family he’s met that doesn’t spend the first few hours of a vacation discussing who will get the car, and when, and for what. I am always startled by these appraisals, and secretly cherish them. I have filed this away with the picture Kit drew of me when he was in kindergarten. Every child had to draw an impression of his or her mother, and struggling toward some Gesell-and-Spock élan that seemed forever out of reach, I was touched by the perfectly normal and smiling stick figure he drew. It is my deficiency that I never know what other families talk about when they meet, or how my children see me.

I collapse happily into bed at two in the morning, and as I listen to the sounds of traffic outside I remember that this day began in East Tumbril with the sound of wind and surf. I cannot make this real: East Tumbril suddenly has the remoteness of a dream that I dreamed the night before.

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