Surviving Swimmers Itch

It was the summer of 1979. Our identical twin baby boys were 6 months old. We lived in a little raised ranch in the farming community of Fairfield Center, Maine. I worked at a paper mill and Connie was a full-time mom. We quickly discovered, as do all new parents, that raising babies was more than a full-time job. It was a busy, busy time in our lives and it required both of us to keep up with things. So when my work informed me that I was to spend the last three weeks of June in Finland, we were both stunned... especially Connie.

The day of my departure arrived and Connie put on a brave face as I walked out the door. I remember her standing at the top of the foyer stairs, sleep deprived, holding two crying babies, covered in spit-up and formula, with tears streaming down her face.

We worked twelve hours a day, seven days a week during the three weeks at the paper mill of our parent company in Finland. The jet lag and the northern latitudes midnight sun  made sleep difficult.  I missed my family and I was worried. Every few days I would call home. Connie was exhausted. The boys had colic, weren't eating and the doctor was concerned about dehydration. It was the skin of a nightmare. I needed to be home.

On our last night in Finland, we were invited to visit the company sauna. The sauna was a 200 year old log structure and was hotter than anything I had ever experienced. We endured the heat as long as we could and then bolted to the lake to dive off the dock into the frigid lake. On the way back into the furnace, we would bolster our courage with bottles of ice cold Finnish vodka. On my third dive into the lake, my wedding ring slipped off my finger and sank to the bottom. For half an hour I tried unsuccessfully to recover it. Hans Bjornberg, the Finnish Vice President who had joined us at the sauna, put his arm around my shoulder. "You will have some explaining to do when you get home," he chuckled. "Yeah, she's not going to be happy," I agreed. One more thing...

I was exhausted when I walked through the front door into our sweltering little house on July 3rd. But I put on a happy face, rolled up my sleeves and pitched in to wash dishes and diapers, feed the kids, and allow my wife to collapse on the couch. She was numb with fatigue. But we had survived this ordeal and I was determined to help get things back to normal... whatever that was.

The next day was Independence Day and I convinced Connie that we should pack a picnic and head for the lake to escape the heat. We arrived at a public swimming spot on Great Pond around noon and found that a good deal of floating litter had accumulated in the weedy end of the beach. As Connie sat in the shallow water in the sandy part of the beach with the boys happily splashing in a plastic clothes basket, I waded into the weeds and collected the trash. A dozen ducks swam around me watching my progress. It was a pleasant couple hours, but soon the boys began to fuss. It was nap time and we headed home.

Sometime after supper, I began to notice an intense itching on my upper legs and in my groin. I headed to the bathroom and dropped my swim suit around my ankles to check things out. The skin from my knees to my belly button had broken out in an angry red rash. It looked like I had the bubonic plague and I was perplexed. What had I gotten into? Whatever it was, I was in agony.

At that point, Connie walked into the bathroom and stopped short. She walked over to me cautiously and slowly inspected my situation. "I don't know what this is, but it's itching like crazy," I blurted. She took two steps back, put her hands on her hips and demanded, "Where's your wedding ring?" Ahhhh... "Yeah, I forgot to tell you that I lost it in Finland. But this has nothing to do with that!" I scrambled. The look on her face let me know she was not convinced.

The rash was a common malady called swimmers itch caused by a parasite that lives in weedy fresh water lakes and ponds. It is transmitted from water fowl. Later that evening Connie also developed a few itchy, red spots on her ankle. So my diagnosis and explanation was finally, begrudgingly, accepted. But it was weeks before her mood improved. The swimmers itch on top of the three week ordeal was just too much. She had seriously lost her sense of humor.

The loss of the wedding ring was forgotten for the most part. Six weeks later the Finns came to Maine and the company threw a party for the management team. 75 employees and their spouses gathered at the company house. Hans Bjornberg stood to welcome the group. "It's nice to be among you. Thank you for all your hard work. We are very pleased with the progress being made here. But I have one question..." He pointed towards me, standing in the crowd with my arm around Connie's shoulder. "Glen, did she believe your story about the lost wedding ring?" I blushed 10 shades of red and the crowd roared with laughter. Connie laughed, too, her wonderful sense of humor regained.

Hans passed away ten years later at the age of 46. Too soon. Too young. But in the intervening years, whenever I saw him, he never failed to tell the story of the lost wedding ring. And ever since that day on Great Pond, I avoid swimming with ducks.

Sean

He was a salty old dog. Sean and his wife lived in the second floor Portland apartment next to Ryan and Kristen in the West End. During the summer I worked on the docks shoveling fish and selling bait to the lobster-men on Custom House Wharf, we lived in the kid's spare bedroom and I would occasionally see him walking slowly in the hall. At first he was stand-offish and then one day, he smelled me.

Sean stood around 5'8" with sparkling blue eyes. He wore a grey beret on his balding head and carried a medical device which delivered powerful intravenous drugs through a picc line into a large vein near his heart. And he wore different colored rubber crocs, one red and one green.

"You smell like the waterfront", he opened. I smiled and apologized, explained my summer job working on the docks. "No need to apologize. I'm a sailor. I find you odor familiar. It reminds me of my life at sea," he replied. Sean went on to talk about his boat. As with many sailors, he went on and on about the obviously critical attributes of his beloved vessel. All of it was lost on me, but I listened attentively, nodded my head and tried to ask savvy questions. "She a beamy boat?" I asked hoping I would get points for at least demonstrating that I knew boats were female. He continued with renewed passion talking about sheets and halyards, jibs and draft. As our conversation came to a close he said, "I have something you need. I'll drop it off at your door." And true to his word, the next morning as I exited the apartment for work at 3:30 AM, I found a rubberized, zippered laundry bag sitting on the hallway floor. Yep, Sean knew what I needed.

We spoke whenever our paths crossed. Some days were better than others. The chemotherapy was kicking his ass. He had moved to this place to be near Maine Medical center and to fight his battle. But he was in heavy seas and he was tiring terribly. I admired him and I ached for him.

The last time I saw him was in the fall as we prepared to head South for the winter. My work was winding down. The leaves on the trees were past their colors, turning brown and littering the street. A cold wind blew them into piles in the gutters. It was rainy, dismal and dreary.

We shook hands. I said good-bye and wished him success in his struggle. He dropped his eyes and shook his head. "But I have a last question for you, Sean. Why do you wear one red croc and one green croc? And why do you wear the red one sometimes on your right foot and sometimes on your left foot?"

He looked at me and a little of the old sparkle returned to his eyes. "Well, it's a nautical thing, you see," he said. "When you are leaving the harbor, headed out to sea, you keep the green buoy on your starboard side and the red buoy on your port. And when you return from sea, it's the opposite. "OK," I offered, "Red-Right-Return." It was a little idiom that I had heard sailors repeat over the years. "So why are you wearing the green croc on your right foot now?" "

He smiled a bittersweet smile. "Just my little thing. Every day I chart my course. I ask myself, "Am I coming or going?" I'm wearing the green on my right and the red on my left because I know I'm going..."

Sean died that winter. He fought and lost his valiant battle. No doubt, he was buried in his red and green crocs and his grey beret. One of the good ones...

Fair winds, friend.

Parable of Immortality ( A ship leaves . . . )
Henry Van Dyke - 1852 - 1933

"I am standing by the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze
and starts for the blue ocean.
She is an object of beauty and strength,
and I stand and watch
until at last she hangs like a peck of white cloud
just where the sun and sky come down to mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says, 'There she goes!
Gone where? Gone from my sight - that is all.

She is just as large in mast and hull and spar
as she was when she left my side
and just as able to bear her load of living freight
to the places of destination.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her.

And just at the moment when someone at my side says,
'There she goes! ' ,
there are other eyes watching her coming,
and other voices ready to take up the glad shout :
'Here she comes!'

Kurt Vonnegut

You Can't Go Home Again

I have fond memories of the years our family lived in the so-called "Northeast Kingdom", Vermont's northern-most counties; Essex, Orleans and Caledonia. In 1955, when I was 4 and Gail was just a puppy, we moved to Barton. Dad worked at the Sutton Pump Station of the Portland Pipeline Corp. and we settled into our idealic life... at least in my childish mind's eye. We moved from house to house to house. Wendy was born on Lincoln Avenue during a January that was colder than a well digger's boot. Eventually we ended up living in a company house at the pump station, when dad was promoted to Station Chief, 10 miles from town and school and groceries, a mile from the nearest neighbor.

Barton became the exciting place where we traveled each week for supplies. There were strawberry ice cream sodas at the Ruggle's Drug Store soda fountain, thick nickle packs of black licorice, occasional hamburgers at the Blue Grill and a rack of comic books... my passion. Life was complete. I vaguely remember Mom complaining about making the long drive on snowy Rte 5 with temperatures hovering below zero for months on end. During the long winters we skated and skied. In the spring we joined friends collecting sap in the maple groves and boiled down the thick syrup over wood burning evaporators in the sugar shack. In the summer we swam in the ice cold glacial lakes and fished the mountain ponds for horn-pout. The autumns were glorious with amazing displays of forest colors. Life was good. I thought we lived in paradise. When Dad was transferred back to Portland when I was in the fifth grade, I grieved the relocation for years.

Connie and I spent 3 months back in Maine this summer. We enjoyed being among family and our time with friends. And when the time came to strike out again, Connie agreed to a trip to Northern Vermont to revisit the place of my childhood. I sold the idea with nostalgic memories and promises of relaxing in beautiful bed and breakfasts in God's country. I did some pre-planning on line and called the 3 listed bed and breakfasts in Barton. All three numbers had been disconnected. Hmmm...

On the day of our departure, we stopped in North Conway, NH. for lunch and discovered that Gail and Roland were also in town with Dan, Lauren and baby Brooke visiting their lot on the Saco River. We couldn't pass up seeing them again and enjoyed a couple hours visiting, walking the woods trails and wading the river. Finally, we headed up through the magnificent Crawford Notch and into Vermont. It was about 4:30 when we rolled off the highway into Barton. Along the way, Connie kept pointing at the luxury resorts and asking, "Are we staying there?" An uncomfortable unease began to grow in my chest. "No honey, not there. I have a special place in mind. I remember some lovely little cottages right on the lake in Barton that I think you will love." I was blowing smoke and I knew it.

The little town was nothing like I remembered it, but was probably entirely as it had ever been. The road crews were laying down new asphalt preparing for the Orleans Fair the next week so it was impossible to get to the lake and the pristine cabins of my memory. The homey little drug store, the former hub of the community, was now a franchise operation. The Blue Grill hadn't existed in decades. Even the Ben Franklin's Five and Dime was gone. The town was shabby. The economy, with the closure of the local mills, was desperate. Connie was beginning to frown. I began to scramble.

There was a little restaurant on the town square and we walked in to use the bathroom and ask some questions. The flies and open food containers at the counter grill disallowed a dining experience. While Connie was enduring a visit to the disreputable restroom, I struck up a conversation with two old-timers at the counter. "Howdy boys. We're looking for someplace to spend the night in town. Any ideas?" They mumbled among themselves and the suspendered, unshaven fellow who had been nominated spokesman pushed back his dirty ballcap before he began. "Well, there is a place. If you go down this gawd-damned road to the gawd-damned river and just as you go around the gawd-damned bend, there are some gawd-damned cabins." I turned to see Connie standing wide eyed behind me. I thanked the fellers and we headed down the gawd-damned road...

Connie's defenses were now on high alert and she began to remind me of my promise for a "nice bed and breakfast". Her tone was just short of shrill. When we pulled into the dirt driveway of the motor inn, we were greeted by 3 road construction workers sitting in rusty lawn chairs drinking from cans of beer, shirts hiked up over their pot bellies. "No... no... no... You've brought me to Deliverance country!" Connie began to rant. "Now honey, let's just check it out" I negotiated. We drove down the drive to another set of cabins facing the river. I rounded the corner and it looked all the world like a scene from the movie "The Grapes of Wrath".  Flat bed trucks, with dirty faced kids sitting on the tailgates, overheated, panting dogs laying in the road, overweight women in house dresses and curious men sitting on porches drinking beer watching us closely. I turned around near the concrete block, lime green swimming pool (It may have been the pool water that was lime green... whatever.) with Connie's persistent encouragement. Not one to give up easily, I said "There was an isolated cabin at the end of the row that might work. I'm going to stop at the office." Connie's back was no longer resting against the seat. She was rigid and at full alert, breathing short shallow breaths.

As I pulled up to the office (there was a piece of paper duct taped to the door that said "Ofice") an old rusted station wagon pulled off the road and parked broadside directly in front of us. Connie was close to panicking "Oh God, Oh God, Oh God...". The passenger side door opened and an old man in dirty cloths, pants hiked up under his armpits and a filthy cowboy hat stepped out. He looked directly at Connie, pulled his hat straight up from his balding head and screeched in a high pitched Festus voice..."Howdy!" Connie began to whimper "no, no, no, no..." At that point, the driver stepped out. She was about 5 ft 6", weighed a good 250 pounds and was wearing a white wife-beater tee shirt over her huge, unharnessed breasts. She had short cropped hair... and a dark, heavy beard. At this point Connie began to scream. "Get me out of here!" and I began to laugh uncontrollably. She verbally assaulted me all the way up the gawd-damned road back to Barton.

I stopped at the only gas station in town for an emergency bottle of wine. I desperately needed to lubricate her sense of humor. We parked next to another car and had to wait as the driver was getting into her car. She was an elderly woman sporting a full head of pink foam pin curlers, most of which were covered by a knotted colorful chiffon scarf. Her knee-high nylons were rolled halfway down her exposed calves below her floral print moo moo and she carried a Hello Kitty purse over her shoulder. She had tubes running up her nose and down to the oxygen bottle she wheeled behind her... and she was smoking a cigarette. I bought two bottles of wine and a big bag of Lays potato chips.

We drove to the Canadian border in stony silence. I did find a delightful bed and breakfast on Lake Memphremagog. I did rent their most expensive suite and we stayed for two nights. We did drink the wine.

The next day, Connie chose to remain at the lake and I drove back to Barton. I visited the old house on Water Street and walked around the school. I visited the Randall's on Breezy Hill and so enjoyed reminiscing with old friends. The House on Lincoln Avenue had been torn down and the house at the pump station in Sutton had been moved. I walked through the woods and the swamps where I had tromped as a boy. I remembered and relived and grieved the loss of my parents and my lost youth. And I realized that, although you can never really go home, our memories, our feelings, our loves, stay with us always. I'm glad I came home to those memories.

It was gawd-damned awesome.