A Place Where the Eelgrass Flows

Where did the time go? The question haunted me as I stared through dingy curtained windows in the two doors that open onto a dusty porch coasted with late autumn leaves. Held tightly in place by thin iron rods, tiny ruffles at top and bottom remained exactly as they were the day my mother had put them up. Shadows still lurked in musty corners of a living room now cold and silent.


On the black wooden railing, rusty metal brackets, painted over and over again, clasped faded green plastic flowers boxes. How forlorn they looked in the early morning mist, still holding wretched lifeless geraniums drooped over the sides.


Across the way, branches of an ancient oak had shed enough leaves to permit me a hazy view of the ocean beyond the park as its shroud of fog began to slowly dissipate.

Years ago, at eventide, my father would walk from the old pay beach to the Oak Bluffs jetties, heaving long casts into the deep for stripers and blues. And on moonlit nights he would sometimes just sit on the huge rocks or stand silently at the edge of the shore, slowly reeling in his line, waiting for a flounder to strike at a strip of squid.

Time has taken its toll. Flower boxes and potted plants that brightened rooms and porches are gone. Fancy pillows resting on the couch and upstairs beds stay fluffed up, undisturbed. Most of all, I miss the dull hammering above my head when my mother would pound on the floor several times with one shoe to signal that it was coffee time. No need for the dim night light above the foot of the narrow back staircase to help guide her way to bed. Nothing is the same without them . . . and never will be.


For the earnest reader, I would like to share the experiences of a wondrous era that is no more . . . and will not come our way again.

I’m lucky. The memories, so vivid, seem like only yesterday.

But where, O where, did the time go?