Signs from the Road: Chapters 5 & 6

My apologies for not posting reliably on Sundays as I said I would. The overriding reason is that I have a new book launching on January 7, 2026! Available on Amazon and through Ingram and local book stores, An Imperfect Life is the story of the Macabee family, spanning six decades of trouble and triumph. More on this new book to come. I'm excited!

 Chapter 5

Orleans MA

We decide to start our road trip today--a day early, and all we do is drive thirty minutes to the neighboring town of Orleans, and then head home again. But as of now, our kitchen is closed and we’re already acting like we’re on vacation. I recommend this approach. It provides an easy-peasy transition to vacation mode. 

In Orleans we and the car get a good cleaning. We drive through a super-duper car wash and Janet and I both get manicures and pedicures. We have lunch at the Sunbird Cafe–organic burgers and carrot-cashew soup and dark roast local coffee. The Sunbird is small, unique, and delicious–offering all natural ingredients mostly from local farms, fabulous teas, cappuccinos and espresso, and a modest and different lunch menu every day. It’s the kind of place where you feel healthy just being there. I use the bathroom before we leave. In a non-descript corner, I spot a painted rock on the floor that says Our days are happier when we give people a piece of our heart instead of a piece of our mind. I make a split-second decision to follow that advice for the next two months. I’ll have no reason to be grumpy. 

I’m tested almost immediately. It takes forever to pack the car. My grand plan of plastic bags and grocery boxes is falling apart. 

Chapter 6

Natick MA

Because we live at the very tip of Cape Cod, and because the whole Outer and Mid Cape is a straight shot either east or west, it’s always a mini-milestone when we cross over the Sagamore Bridge and are officially off the Cape. Our daughter Jessica and her family live two-plus hours up the road, and if there’s ever any reason to cross the bridge, she’s it. 

We’re giddy on our way to Jess and Mike’s house. We’ve planned a farewell Chinese buffet dinner with them, Mike’s mother, Pat, and our four grandkids. There is nothing especially special about our visit, but it’s significant to me because this will be my longest time ever away from Jess. I’m sure the importance of this doesn’t register with her. I've learned over the years that in most cases adult children don’t have the same hovering perspective until they hover over their own adult kids. There must be a maternal antenna that never fails, even when our children grow up. I almost always have my phone with me, specifically so I won’t ever miss an emergency call from Jess, and I’ve never been willing to be out of range for more than a week or two. But now, as we set up a makeshift buffet table in her Queen Ann Victorian kitchen, I know my daughter is in good hands. She’s married to a good man and they have four active and wonderful kids, ages twelve, ten, eight and six. My daughter’s life is chaotically lovely. 

My first three grandkids are boys. There’s lots of jumping and wrestling and carpooling and time at sports events. Jess is my only child so I’m learning by observation that boys are indeed different from girls: much more physical and tighter lipped. Tonight we don’t see much of Ryan, the oldest at twelve, because he and his friends are preoccupied with the video game Fortnight. We traditionally have to force Drew, who’s ten, to let us kiss and hug him, but we can tell by his sheepish grin that he doesn’t really mind. Eight-year-old Logan and six-year-old Reese are still readily available: they’re young enough that showing us their bedrooms or playing a quick game of Hangman is still fun. Janet and I won the lottery with these kids. This is a forever love that before I felt and experienced it, I had no idea.

I make a mental note to send Jess and Mike and the kids plenty of postcards and doo-dad mementos from the road. (It doesn’t turn out that way: most of our postcards don’t arrive until long after we’re home again.)

Signs from the Road Chapter 4

 Chapter 4

Provincetown MA

It’s not unusual for the three thousand voting residents of Provincetown to head somewhere warm in the winter months. Our bustling seaside town hosts up to sixty thousand visitors in summer and shrinks to less than three hundred hearty souls by the time frigid January rolls in. The folks that stay here either live in town full time, like us, or are second home owners who feel like they’ve won the lottery having this glorious place to come whenever they can. This will be the first time in the six years we’ve lived here that Janet and I leave during winter. There’s a good reason why we’ve stayed put until now: some washashores are surprised by the desolation and loneliness of this peninsula and its winter freeze, but not us. Even though most of the shops and restaurants are closed, winter means we get to cozy in at home, read, cook, work, walk the beach and dunes in solitude, and visit friends we don’t see enough of during the busy summer and fall, when everyone and their brother wants to come visit. 

            Provincetown is a gem. It’s surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean and famous for its vast beaches, sand dunes, gorgeous harbors, and piers. The town is a distinct vacation destination for artists of all kinds, for gay and lesbian folks who cherish being able to be themselves, and for families, misfits, sailors, fishermen, and summer workers. Established in 1727, this is a still Portuguese fishing hub as well as a refuge for non-conforming creative types. The Catholic Portuguese and the Gay and Lesbian communities have never blended very well because of religious and lifestyle reasons, but even so, Provincetown’s tolerance is the stuff of legends. The bottom-line message is ‘Come to Provincetown and be whoever you want to be.’ This means a fifty-five-year-old high male school principal can publicly dress as a woman for a special week’s vacation and his heterosexual wife may very well be vacationing with him. Everyone has fantasies. In Provincetown, as long as they don’t harm anyone else, you’re free to go at them. 

        When Janet and I first arrived here, part-time, we owned an eight hundred square foot condominium one block from Commercial Street, the main street in town and one of only two roads that run all of three miles from the east end to the west end of town. Our condo was the middle unit of three; originally a single-family house until divided up and gifted to the three children of Joy McNulty, the owner of the very famous Lobster Pot Restaurant. Before Joy, 20 Court Street had been a Brazilian convent where I’m told the resident nuns snapped rulers on the knuckles of their unruly students and afterwards played badminton in the backyard. Our place was as sweet as could be: two bedrooms, a living room with a four-window corner, a brick patio and a sunny roof deck, and a red fuzzy sectional couch that welcomed everyone who stayed with us, including dogs. For two decades, we made the three-plus hour drive almost every weekend to park the car and not set foot in it again until we headed home two or three days later. We never complained about the ride, not even once. 

Provincetown is also superbly walkable. The east end, where we now live in a modest and ample single-family house, has most of the art galleries, almost all scattered along Commercial Street. The west end, where property is more expensive, extends to the very tip of the peninsula and the jetty, where you can balance yourself on huge rocks that take you all the way to Long Point, a small island where seals frolic barely a hundred feet from shore. There are always rescue stories of tourists stranded while walking on the jetty, initially balancing from one rock to another during low tide only to be surprised and trapped by an incoming high tide. These folks sometimes need rescue by the Coast Guard. 

If you live here, you learn to follow the tide schedule closely. But one time Janet and I and our friend Liz uneventfully took the twenty-minute water taxi to Long Point. We swam and watched seals frolicking nearby and were sunburned and happily on our way back when the water taxi boat stopped a surprising distance from the shore. 

“The tide is too shallow for us to go in any further,” the college aged captain announced. He instructed us to disembark about three hundred feet from shore and only slightly apologized about the wade to shore. The water was up to our knees when Janet stepped in a sand hole caused by the incoming and outgoing tides. She went down in slow motion, along with her camera, her iPhone and her iPad all falling backwards into the water. All soaked. She was furious, but Liz and I couldn’t stop laughing. We couldn’t help ourselves. We were little kids muffling our giggles in church. Now, even twenty years later, Janet still fumes when Liz and I cruelly relive all the details. 

“You fell so gracefully on your ass,” we say. “And both your legs just shot straight up in the air.”

“Shut up,” Janet replies.