Day One & Mary Oliver in Provincetown

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JB and I planned to arrive in Provincetown for lunch but our lazy movements and very heavy traffic got us here at 4 pm.
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The traffic was bad. We moved six miles in one hour, bumper to bumper. And in the midst of it we had to pee. We were lucky to come across a rest area that had bathrooms. But when we tried to get back on the highway in this bumper to bumper traffic, a van refused to give way.
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JB was driving and was no more than a few feet from the van's front seat passenger, who looked menacingly at her.
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"What do you want me to do?" JB asked her.

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"That's what you get for stopping at the rest area!" the woman scowled.

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That was more than JB could take. Normally polite and mostly respectful, she looked back at the woman and said, "We had to pee, you bitch!"

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We fumed for a few minutes and then laughed for a lot longer. We both decided that if we had occasion to help or hinder this van, we would be nice and give way. That must be our version of 'teach you a lesson." :)

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Last night I made the first purchase of my Provincetown summer.
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JB and I walked up and down Commercial Street last night before and after dinner. I always find my way to the Provincetown Bookstore. It has been here for forty years and the walls and bookshelves are tatteredly precious. They're old.
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I bought a signed copy of Mary Oliver's book called Our World. She published it in 2007, two years after her partner, Molly Malone Cook died. The book is a combination of Molly's worldwide photographs and Mary's incredible words.

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Mary Oliver lives in Provincetown and she and Molly Malone Cook lived here together for close to forty years. Maybe because I know what it's like and what it means to live here, or maybe because I've been in a loved relationship myself for 25 years (not without its sometimes ups and sometimes downs--let me not romanticize misleadingly!), or maybe because Mary Oliver can write so deep and so well, like no one else; what ever the reason, this book is the perfect start to my time in Provincetown.

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There are two parts of Our World I want to share with you.

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The first is this by Mary Oliver about Molly:

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All of a sudden she began to whistle. By all of a sudden I mean that for more than thirty years she had not whistled. It was thrilling. At first I wondered, who was in the house, what stranger? I was upstairs reading, and she was downstairs. As from the throat of a wild and cheerful bird, not caught but visiting, the sounds warbled and slid and doubled back and larked and soared.

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Finally I said, Is that you whistling? Yes, she said, I used to whistle, a long time ago. Now I see I can still whistle. And cadence after cadence she strolled through the house, whistling.
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I know her so well, I think, I thought. Elbow and ankle. Mood and desire. Anguish and frolic. Anger too. And the devotions. And for all that, do we even begin to know each other? Who is this I’ve been living with for thirty years?

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This clear, dark, lovely whistler?
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To know and love someone well and still be surprised? I know this is true. And when that happens, if I don't find it unsettling, which I sometimes do, then I find it thrilling too.
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Molly Malone Cook died in 2005 and Mary Oliver is still here, still vibrant, still writing. This is the the last entry she wrote about Molly, in this lovely book:

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Afternote

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How often now I just sit, with my

elbows on the deck and my hands

holding up my face bold and upright,

and stare into the past.

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This is my reaction to that: Love is worth it. I won't say it doesn't hurt to the very core sometimes, I won't even pretend that it always works out, or that it's enough, but love is worth it. I don't want to ever forget that, and I don't want to ever believe otherwise.

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Love

kj