by Clara Parkes
And despite her 35,000-square-foot vacation home just up the coast, Martha understands this, too. Why else, when the media mogul was presented with a humble acrylic poncho crocheted by a fellow inmate on the eve of her release, would she proudly wear it out into the free world? Never before—and probably never again—has a poncho made such a big stir.
Which is why I’m confident she would’ve appreciated my liverwurst sandwich. Psssst, Martha, call me.
HAPPILY EVER AFTER
I LIVE IN A farmhouse on a bluff of a peninsula looking inland across blueberry fields, treetops, and water to rolling, rocky hills that eventually lead to Canada. My view is unmarred by any human structure save for the distant blinking of cell phone towers.
The house was built in the typical New England style, with a big house leading to a middle house, to an unfinished back house, and finally to a barn. The big house was built in 1893, with the middle, back, and barn built soon after. I like to think that most of the trim came from the Sears Roebuck catalog.
The view called to Clare and me during a brief visit in the summer of 1995. We were exploring the perimeter of my Great-Aunt Kay’s house, long since boarded up and uninhabited. We pushed our way through the bamboo, the sumac, the tall, forbidding weeds doing their best to keep us back. When we finally reached the north side of the house, we discovered three windows at waist height, which had not been boarded up or covered from the inside. I cupped my hands to the glass and peered in, seeing a small sitting room with two rocking chairs. It had all sorts of garbage piled high, but I remember the rocking chairs.
As if on cue, both of us followed the gaze of whoever would have been sitting in those chairs. It was not the view I normally saw from the road when driving by her house. It was a far more settled, perfect, painterly landscape, a siren’s call to my cityweary soul. Suddenly I saw myself in that room, cleaned and lovingly brought back to life again, sitting in one of those rocking chairs and gazing out at that view. I knew, without a doubt, that this was where we were meant to be.
That week we hatched a plot, which we jokingly called “Operation Freedom.” We would find a way to leave San Francisco, move to Maine, transform that farmhouse into our very own home, and live happily ever after.
Everyone thought we were crazy. On the outside, the house was a disaster. Peeling paint, cracked plaster, windows that barely held their glass in place. A few years earlier, the first floor had given up completely and rotted into the muddy basement, taking all its belongings with it. The floor had been rebuilt and some possessions put back in place, but the rest was still heaped in the barn.
The house was like the remains of a fine sweater discovered quite by accident in an old, forgotten suitcase. Moths had eaten through the stitches. Both elbows had blown through, wrists were worn away, the shoulders thinned to a shadow of their former selves. But the compassionate eye saw potential. All the original lines were still there, the granite foundation and steady roofline signaling, unquestionably, possibility.
My great-aunt was a character deserving of a book all her own. Immediately after World War II, she traveled throughout Europe for the Audubon Society presenting a film on the birds of North America. She cared for her ailing parents, never marrying or having children of her own. When her parents died, she took on the responsibility of caring for their belongings—and they had many, for they’d never been able to part with what they’d inherited from their parents’ houses. The family home was jammed with generations and generations of things that held no real appeal to an outsider. When prompted, she would launch into a story about how so-and-so, from somewhere-or-other, used this for something a long, long time ago.
Perhaps she noticed that we were bored senseless by these stories, my brothers and I, for she began writing them down on pale yellow tags and affixing them to things—“Key to Arthur Cyrus Hill’s office, dentist, Boston, 1843,” read one, or “Sterling spoons marked ARH, gift to Adella Richards Hill from Emma Aline Osgood, Somerville, 1861.” Naturally, my brothers and I responded by adding our own labels to things. “Spatula, handle partially melted by Jeffrey Tousey Parkes, Maine, 1984,” with the name underlined three times for emphasis.
Aunt Kay was a true eccentric who followed her own compass and didn’t care what anyone said or thought. To her, it was only natural that the passenger’s seat of her car should be removed, so that her dog, Loki, could get in and out more easily. Today, she might have been featured on Hoarders, but she was, in kinder terms, a curator of the world’s abandoned belongings. The fact that some of those things came from the dump was really beside the point. She was saving treasures that others had so carelessly left behind.
We didn’t get the keys to her farmhouse until a year after we arrived in Maine. We’d spent that first year in Portland getting our footing, Clare finding work and me building my freelance career, both of us ecstatically noting things like The First Firefly, The First Snowfall, and The First Power Outage.
When we finally got inside the farmhouse, the scope of our folly hit home. The place was a wreck. Broken chairs, rusty box springs, parlor pianos (yes, plural), a roll of used fiberglass insulation, stacks of green window shutters that did not belong to the house, two kerosene-filled oil drums that sprang a leak as we rolled them out. There were steamer trunks jammed with mildewed sheets and moth-eaten blankets that had been home to generations of squirrels and mice. We leafed through heaps of old navigational charts Aunt Kay’s parents had used when cruising up the coast from Boston to Maine each summer. It was as if every stitch in the sweater had been somehow compromised. What had once passed for a kitchen pantry now held serving platters and rusty paint cans alike. And there were stoves. Gas stoves from the 1960s, cast-iron stoves from the 1800s. We counted twenty-four total, only two of which were fully functioning. Stoves were her favorite. When I once asked why, she answered, “Why not?”
We took a full year to empty out the farmhouse, driving up each Friday night, working all weekend, and schlepping our exhausted selves back home on Sunday evening. It’s a miracle neither of us contracted hantavirus because the whole upstairs was one giant fossilized pile of mouse and bat dung. Yet the house still called to us, so we toiled, investing every penny we had to bring this old place back to life.
So vast were the needed repairs, and so limited our skills, that we hired someone to manage the work for us. He would oversee the stripping of the house down to its very joists, patching, rewiring, restoring, insulating, replacing windows, installing heat and bathrooms and a functioning kitchen where none had existed for decades. My goal was to breathe new life back into this house while making any upgrades invisible to the passerby. I wanted it to stay as true to the original sweater design as possible, to look like nothing but a farmhouse that had been lovingly tended all these years. I’d salvage what I could, gently tease apart what I couldn’t, then spin, dye, and slowly reknit.
In the beginning, I adored the process of rebuilding this house, marking the exact spot for each electrical outlet, light-bulb, and switch. Each room was positioned to maximize a specific view I’d imagined in my head. Everything, down to the last hinge and doorknob, existed for a reason.
I was designing what I envisioned would be the perfect sweater, one that matched every contour of our bodies so completely that we’d never need another sweater, ever again. All this was on paper and in my imagination. As it gradually transformed into the three-dimensional reality of a home, the disappointments came. Stitches didn’t resemble what I’d imagined, rows had decreases that didn’t match the perfect slant I’d drawn on graph paper. Original window hardware was thrown away by mistake, a beautiful old attic window was broken by one of the workers. Why hadn’t they vented the stove the way I’d asked? Shouldn’t this outlet be a quad?
The longer the project lingered, the less fuss I made when things weren’t right. When bathroom fixtures arrived without my ever having specified them, I gave up. I’d reached that point in the project where I was sick of everything.
I just wanted to bind off the damned stitches and finally wear the sweater. So what if the cuff was too loose? I could always unravel that part and redo it later, right?
As anyone who’s renovated an old farmhouse will confirm, the project took twice as long and cost twice as much as estimated. We were out of money and beginning to compromise with the game of “I’ll give you X if you’ll still do Y.” Now in play were two crucial pieces: the porch and the septic system.
One reason I rebuilt the farmhouse was so that we could put a screened porch off the back and live in it all summer long, gazing out at that amazing view without ever having to slap a mosquito. But we’d become so bogged down with matters of insulation and windows and heating systems, the contractor’s unraveling marriage and his foreman’s drinking problem, that the porch was now on the chopping block. If the septic tank was compromised in any way—and all signs pointed to “yes”—the porch would have to go. Everything else, in fact, would need to be cut.
Our local plumber, Bobby Gray, is related to half the town and has probably been in every house at one point or another. He told me he’d installed the original tank in 1976. Remembered it as if it were yesterday. (Most people who’d had dealings with Kay did not easily forget her.) It was a steel tank—he even knew the gallon size—and it had to be rusted through by now. There’s no way a tank could last that long, he said.
When they began to dig where Bobby had said it was, they found nothing. They kept digging and digging, until suddenly they hit something hard. It didn’t make a metallic bang but more of a dense, tomblike thud. The sound of hitting concrete.
I don’t know how she did it, but my perfectly eccentric Great-Aunt Kay had managed to install an entirely new septic system in her back field without anyone in my town of 910 taking notice. I call it the Miracle of the Septic Tank, and to this day I give thanks to what I can only assume was the work of a benevolent Saint Septius. It was like discovering a stash of pristine leftover yarn, not only in the same color but the very same dye lot we needed. Our sweater could now be finished, trim and button bands, porch and septic alike.
The week before a family reunion was to take place in my town, and where I was to preview our nearly finished masterpiece, I got a call. There had been a fire. Everything was done—the heat, the insulation, the walls, the windows, the roof—and we were in the home stretch, refinishing the wide pine floor boards. The refinisher had left his debris in a black plastic bag in the corner of a sunny bay window. The heat of the sun caused the materials in the bag to combust, smoldering through two layers of floor and into the basement. When our foreman arrived, unusually early and totally by chance, the fire had just burned through to the outside wall, where the added oxygen would have surely brought the whole house down in a matter of minutes. He hooked up a garden hose and sprayed until the volunteer fire department, led by our neighbor three houses up, could arrive.
It had never occurred to either of us that we’d lose the house before ever getting to live in it. But after the initial shock, we both realized that we felt strangely okay about the whole thing, like losing our dream wasn’t the end of the journey at all.
Finally, on a brisk October day, the very minute it was deemed ready, we moved in, sweeping out the last of the workers and locking the door behind us. Every wall, door, and linear foot of trim still needed painting, but no matter. We were finally wearing the sweater of our dreams, and life was good.
I’ll admit it now, we could’ve done a better job preserving the original yarn. Our neighbor Wayne, a robust eighty-nine at the time, presented us with a housewarming gift: a box of perfectly cut kindling made from the discarded laths that had been heaped out front. I cannot bear to burn these pieces of wood, they are such a beauty—as if Wayne had taken the very fibers from the moth-eaten parts I’d rejected and patiently respun them into tidy little skeins for darning. They sit in their box, which he’d covered with recycled Christmas paper, as reminders to us both to look twice before discarding anything.
I love my farmhouse. It is the closest thing to “home” I’ve managed to create for myself. I know its smells and sounds, I can navigate it in the dark. Walls and trim that were brand new with the renovation now have cracks and dings and smudges all their own. The tender pink bricks of the newly laid fireplace are now well-seasoned from years of quiet, contented evenings gazing at the embers. Far from “done,” it remains a work in progress, rather like life itself.
Everyone thought we’d moved to the middle of nowhere, but that’s the irony. I’m surrounded by people. They’re quirky, a little rough around the edges, but also kind, clever, and resourceful. They’re welcoming and accepting without any sense of self-awareness. A few travel back and forth by private jet, building their own outdoor elevators so they can reach their yachts without having to climb stairs. But when asked, they also used their money to buy the local market when it risked closing, running it at a financial loss and with immeasurable benefit to the community.
My other neighbors (the ones without the jets) are always busy. They’re cutting firewood in the winter, setting out their lobster traps, planting seedlings, shooting deer. They tend to their children, grandchildren, and gardens, their kitchens always steaming with canning activity every August. They also socialize. They gather at the market. They hold protest signs, bring casseroles to the hungry, and sing together on Sunday.
Ask almost anyone in my little town, and they’ll agree that it’s as close to paradise as you can get. But you know what? Given the opportunity, almost everybody who can afford it leaves for a little while. Especially in the winter.
Helen and Scott Nearing were once neighbors. These famous homesteaders and organic farmers proudly lived off the land. But they, too, would quietly slip away to sunnier climates in the dead of winter. As I write this, the Nearings’ protégée Eliot Coleman and his wife, Barbara Damrosch, are sunning themselves at an eco-tourism resort in Argentina.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder. I certainly appreciate my little town more after I’ve been away. The closer we get to home, the more alert and excited I become, like a dog who knows he’s going to his favorite beach. My nose perks up. I open the windows so I can smell the fresh air. The road gets narrower and bumpier and windier, the sights more familiar until, finally, I’m on roads I could travel in my sleep. We pull into our driveway, stop the engine, and sit still for a minute to take it all in. The silence unfolds around us, then the other sounds: the far-off bell buoy in the harbor, the flickering of leaves, the hermit thrush singing from deep in the woods. In the spring, the sudden intensity of peepers.
My little corner of Maine is where I feel closest to God—the creator, benevolent spirit, whatever you’d like to call it—and for this I gave up a prosperous career in the most beautiful city in the world, a place where roses grow year-round, jobs are plentiful, and public transportation is easy and abundant. I gave it all up, and my life has been unimaginably richer for it.
But it’s not perfectly rosy. We haven’t yet figured out how to make a living selling blueberries by the side of the road, so we still spend part of each week several hours away from our beloved farmhouse in the not-so-grand metropolis of Portland. Clare goes there to work, I go there to be in the world.
It’s taken me a while to accept the fact that my dream sweater isn’t enough. It turns out I also need people, energy, vibrancy, and community, more than my town of 910 can provide. I crave variety, that grain of sand in my oyster, the daily walk through Mr. Rogers’s busy little neighborhood. I like to greet the tattooed man with his tiny dog, pass the elderly couple waiting for the bus, smile to the guy who’s always standing in front of the gay bar, morning cigarette in one hand, coffee mug in the other, who tells me the doctor told him to stop but what the hell, he’ll die happy. I love to be greeted by name at my coffee place and presented with a cappuccino with a perfectly formed heart in its foam.
It turns out, “happily ever after” is a moving target. No matter how perfect any one
sweater may be, it’s only human to crave another. And another, and another.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing a book is a lot like knitting a sweater. To the casual observer, it looks like just one person wiggling fingers over needles or a keyboard. This can go on for months, years even, before the end result is proudly worn into the world, the maker’s name squarely on the cover. What looks like a solitary endeavor is, in fact, supported at every step by a broad foundation of people.
“Do you like this stitch?” or “Is this dreadfully boring?” we ask a trusted few, those we know will encourage the good and warn us away from the unflattering. I am grateful to my friends and trusted readers, especially to Jane, Jen, and Cat, for helping me sort through all the swatches and find the right stitch, gauge, and pattern for this book.
The writer, like the wool in our yarn, is the product of generations upon generations of breeding, prudent upbringing, and careful finishing. Here I must thank my family, both past and present, for existing exactly as they were and are, and for allowing me to tell my side of our collective stories here. I come from good stock, creative, bright, and occasionally eccentric people who all share common traits of large foreheads and a penchant for puns.
The agent acts as a compass for our lone writer as she navigates that sea of stitches. Elizabeth Kaplan served as my advocate, negotiator, idea-bouncer-offer, and respected compatriot. There was not a moment when I didn’t feel she had my back.
Not that she needed to, because I was in good hands. Melanie Falick is the writer’s editor, the kind I thought only existed at places like The New Yorker. To be able to conceive of this book and bring it to fruition in her partnership has been a gift.
Then there’s the long-suffering partner. Clare lived most intimately with this project. She has endured hours of conversation about something that, let’s be honest, wasn’t always that interesting. Writing is a solitary act, and the writer mid-book can be dreadful company. Before the chapters came together as a whole, before any sign of a sweater was there, Clare nodded and smiled, read those lousy first drafts, brought mug after mug of tea, and never faltered in saying, “You can do it.” I can’t possibly put my gratitude into words, I can only repay the debt with a lifetime supply of fresh-baked biscuits and the promise that I’ll do all the Christmas shopping, wrapping, and shipping from now to eternity.
