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| Portsmouth Fence; Charley Freiberg photo |
The British Car Gal and I went on our late-summer adventure
last weekend, and this year we went to the coast. The coast is a lot flatter
than the mountains, and a lot more crowded; but the weather was just about
perfect – warm enough during the day, but not too warm; and brisk enough at
night that an open window cooled the
room we shared nicely. Country girls that we are, we had to shut the
window and turn on the A/C to sleep: the sounds that drifted in from the hotel
parking lot weren’t at all like the sound of crickets and gentle breezes that
we’re used to.
The BCG grew up in The Big City, and I marveled at how well
she kept track of where we were and which direction we needed to go in to get
to our next destination. Even a small city like Portsmouth can be too much for
my tiny-village-bred mind; half the time I can’t locate the street signs before
we’ve gone through the intersection, and if I can’t see the ocean, like as not
I’m not sure where it is. There are none of the big rocks and old trees and half-fallen
barns I’m used to using to site my location by, and all the streets seem more
or less the same. In an old city like Portsmouth, at least there are a lot of
old buildings that mean something to my location-locator brain – much
friendlier than most city buildings. Still, the BCG is a much better city street
navigator – and parker - than I.
Old buildings were mostly what was on our minds. The BCG and
I enjoy peering into other people’s houses and lives, and Portsmouth and
environs are packed with historical houses. It being the oldest city in the
state of NH, and a major trading port in the long ago long ago, there are some
governor’s and rich businessmen’s mansions, some fascinating really old homes
(which often started out as dock-side warehouses and grew, room by room, ell by
ell, into quite large homes – sometimes resembling complicated rabbit warrens
with multiple stairways and halls and strange little cubby holes), and some
enclosed gardens worth strolling through. Stuff grows on the coast that we can
only dream of growing inland – the season’s longer and warmer, so it’s kind of
like being in a different country altogether.
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| Gate in Portsmouth; Charley Freiberg photo |
The oddest living space we visited was a retired submarine –
claustrophobic, stinky, hot, airless and a total curiousity. How grown men
managed to live and sleep and work in such tight quarters – how they even
managed to get into and out of some of the bunks – strains the imagination.
Whatever position they landed in as they wedged themselves into unbelievably
tight spaces would be the position they slept in, because there wasn’t room to
roll over, sit up, or do anything but slither back out the way they got in. I
didn’t see a chiropractor’s office on board, but I’m thinking it would have
been a valuable addition. It reminded me a lot of those caves and passages we
crawled through last summer on our mountain adventure, and I bumped my head
just about the same number of times.
We also toured an old church, and the New Castle lighthouse.
The BCG is fascinated with lighthouses, pretty certain that she’s a
reincarnation of a lighthouse keeper or his daughter. I’d never been up in a
lighthouse before, but it closely resembles climbing up into one of the fire
towers that are situated on many mountains and tall hills – except that instead
of looking down onto an expanse of green broken up by little lakes and ponds,
and watching a raptor float silently by as it hunts for small mammals, one
looks down onto a vast expanse of blue broken up by patches of green islands
and boats of all kinds, and one watches seagulls flap by, hunting for fish or
tourist lunch leftovers to snag. Instead of that big topographical map that
fire wardens have in the middle of their aerie, there’s a giant light smack in
the middle of the high room – and little bitty doorways through which a
lighthouse keeper can crawl to access a narrow outdoors deck that circles the
lighthouse, for replacing or cleaning windows so the light can shine clearly.
Definitely not a place to be walking during a gale.
I think how curious it must be to live, as many people in
that area do, cheek by jowl next to one of the old, old houses; or even inside
one. Some of the old historic places rent an ell to keep some income coming in
year-round to help with upkeep – and, I reckon, so that the old buildings
aren’t totally deserted during the cold months of the year. Downtown, many old,
old houses are owned and lived in by just regular people. Some have
pocket-handkerchief-sized tiny gardens in front, and narrow alleys that lead to
a tiny back yard; many of the houses sit just a few feet from the road, and so
close to the next house that one could open a window and reach across with a
cup of sugar when the neighbor asks to borrow one.
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| Portsmouth, House and Garden; Charley Freiberg photo |
Walking the old streets, meandering through the
reconstructed gardens, peering into all the rooms in a very old house, we’re
struck by how differently folks lived. There’s an aura of timelessness – as
though we were walking through today’s
sun, and shadows from a hundred, and two hundred, and longer years ago. The
dust in those old places stirs and we breathe some of it – we take in motes
from a once-vibrant present, and I wonder if those motes hold a memory that
melds with my living cells. We missed the evening ghost tour, but I wonder –
had we taken it, would we have seen or sensed something unusual, or something
that was, somehow, oddly familiar?
Sitting now in my small library room, I ponder some of the
tiny rooms we wondered about – how could a bedroom be so small? But this room I
sit in is barely bigger than those; and my own bedroom is not a whole lot
larger; and the 20th-century submarine bunks were infinitesimally
smaller. My own rooms seem larger because I have the handiness of living in
them – I know where to step, even in the dark, I know where to set down my cup,
where to leave my slippers, where to hang my bathrobe, how to open a closet
door without moving all the furniture, first. Familiarity can cause time and
space to expand; familiarity can make what seems Other- Strange- Alien to seem
Similar, Comfortable, Understandable.
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| Iron Fence, Portsmouth; Charley Freiberg photo |
The BCG and I wandered in and out of new and old territory,
new and old thoughts, new and old imaginings: how would it feel to be a
lighthouse keeper? How would it feel to be a servant or slave in the highest
room in this old house? How would it feel to swish in long dresses through this
garden? What would it be like to know better than I know my own home, what
living in another country was like? What would we think, what would matter most
to us? If we had been at one moment a British or French or African citizen, and
in the next become a new and undefined US dweller – how would our lives have
changed? What would we think about?
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| House and Garden, Portsmouth; Charley Freiberg photo |
What’s unfamiliar and new is alluring; it calls to us, and experiencing
it in itself becomes a vacation. The BCG and I even ate all around the world
during our adventure: Mexican, Irish, Himalayan, Beach Shack – a richness in
sights and sounds, flavors and smells, thoughts and considerations – a
smorgasbord of Different From Us.
Different, when embraced, is invigorating and exciting; and
what’s old and different reminds us that things change, often in unimaginable,
wondrous ways.
And, mostly, we’re fascinated. And, mostly, we always should
be.
For the blog,
September 1, 2017
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| Windowboxes, Portsmouth; Charley Freiberg photo |
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