JULY 29
It's never too late to do the little things.
Today is my birthday.
Yesterday was-and always will be to me, though they have long ago passed on-my parents' anniversary. I was their first anniversary present. The last week in July was always a big deal in our house.
An only child, I inherited a lovely home in a tiny village on Buzzards Bay, near Cape Cod. And though I've lived in Manhattan more than thirty years, my hometown is where I am today, hanging out on the beach with my family and visiting the cemetery where my folks are buried.
I am not here nearly enough, but I do try to tend to the graveyard when I can. As time has gone on, the plot has become inevitably fuller: an uncle from each side of my family, their two widowed wives here with us still. As in life, it turned out that everyone wanted to be together.
The grave is always graced with pebbles and shells from family visitors, and like today I try hard, often with a cousin's help, to have flowers and such that I think everyone would like: pansies in the spring, if I manage it, pink geraniums and alyssum in the summer, a wreath at Christmas.
Of course, I'm far from perfect, as you'll see all too often during this year of good deeds. I did have to steal some little pumpkins back from the grave one Thanksgiving morning when my cornucopia centerpiece looked a little sparse. Thanks, guys.
JULY 30
Always keep building.
This afternoon I paid five dollars for a free concert.
I grew up in New Bedford, Massachusetts-"Moby-Dick's hometown!" I like to tell people. And today is a special day. It is Melville's birthday celebration at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, and being a lover of New Bedford's most famous novel, I am all atwitter. And I love that he and I share a birthday week, with a mere 133 years between us. I'm running a little late, so I rush down to the city's historic district to hear a woodwind quartet play classical music and sea shanties in his name. As I turn a corner onto a cobblestone street that looks much the same as when the whaling industry made this the richest town in mid-nineteenth-century America, I hear the haunting strains of a familiar nautical tune. I start to cry.
"Lucem Diffundo" was New Bedford's proud motto back when it was a wealthy city: "We light the world." In the 1850s, no one dreamed that soon electricity would make oil lamps defunct and that New Bedford would falter; it has never recovered. It seems every effort at revival has been thwarted, despite the most valiant efforts (many, I can say proudly, by members of my family who reside here still); the economy has hit hard here, shuttering a thriving downtown and closing mill after mill. Perhaps most important of all, years of overfishing have shrunk the country's largest commercial fleet to a shadow of what I remember as a kid.
And yet. In the last two decades, what was a musty little museum to which we were shunted off on rainy days back in the 1960s has become a world-class showplace and educational center on all matters whaling.
I've been a member of the New Bedford Whaling Museum-as my parents were before me-since I became a grown-up, and I visit nearly every time I'm in town. It reminds me of where I came from, and what a place and a people can become again.
The concert is free, but I drop five dollars in the donation box in the lobby. A city is built brick by brick.
JULY 31
Share a memory.
I borrowed my aunt's car this weekend. She's eighty-seven, currently medicated, and not allowed to drive anyway. Still, she's not entirely happy about the lending.
Of course, along with borrowing the car comes running some errands, Auntie riding shotgun, and today was one of those days. First the bank, then a lengthy visit to the Stop & Shop ("They move things around every week!"), and filling the three-quarters-full gas tank, "Just in case." (In case what-I go to Florida for the afternoon?)
I knew she wanted to spend some time at the beach over the weekend, too-something she's always loved-so we agreed to go after our chores. I bought sandwiches, we spent a perfect seashore hour or so, and then I suggested getting some ice cream on the way home. She demurred. "Why?" I prodded, knowing her predilections. "You love ice cream." She relented, and off to the adorable milk can–shaped local haunt we went.
A simple scoop of vanilla was her initial choice, but I pushed once more. "How about frozen pudding? That was always Dad's favorite." (Dad being my father, her favorite brother.) Her eyes lit up. "Oh! I haven't had that in years." So, frozen pudding it was, and, cones in hand, we put the convertible top down and licked our way home in happy silence.
I can't say why going out for ice cream is so special-childhood, summer, long days, no school, who knows? But I do know this: a trip to get ice cream-for it always is a trip, no matter how close-is like nothing else. My theory is that it's not only about the ice cream; it's about all the other times you've been to get ice cream, every one of them, rolled into one huge, happy ice cream memory.