Reflections on Leaving for the Season

Carl Butz gave me simple instructions back in 2020 when he asked me to write a column for the Messenger entitled “Here Back East”: just write a letter about your thoughts and observations from the previous week. As I prepare to leave Florida to return north for the summer, I am looking back at the season that is now ending and those things that have made it especially meaningful to me.

Today is Sunday, and I am enjoying a usual morning respite at my desk with my touchy Olympia typewriter, pouring my thoughts onto the page for Ali to make sense of them. I am a year older and a bit more forgetful than this time last year, but I have been better at keeping my anger under wraps. I guess there was less to be angry about? My friendships have deepened—not only among my luncheon group but outside of it as well. I have looked forward to my painting classes on Monday and Wednesday afternoons, and now I write with an eye to a watercolor or charcoal that will accompany the piece. I torture Patti with drawings of her that she discards upon gifting. My grandchildren are a regular source of joy and I especially enjoy our conversations, which are deeper and more wide-ranging now—a reflection of their maturity.

I am staying above the fray with politics since there is very little I can do beyond voting. I have no mind to protest. There is plenty of opportunity during our monthly lunches to vent my views. My social conversations have become less gossipy and more directed toward listening to what others say about their thoughts and feelings.

Finishing my book, Leibisch’s Journey –my so-called origin book about my father—has not only left me with a feeling of accomplishment but with a deeper understanding of who he was and, perhaps, who I am. I look forward to standing before audiences and responding to their questions about it.

As I pack for my return to East Hampton, I also look ahead to camp in Maine and welcoming my friends and family who will join me there this season. I anticipate floating the streams and, of course, fishing for smallmouth bass with my guide, Andy. Camp without loved ones is a lonely place.

I am sending boxes of books to Maine and East Hampton for summer reading material. Some of the books I have already started: a new biography of Mark Twain, Joan Didion’s notes, and novels and short stories by Mavis Gallant. And, of course, there are some of my Yiddish writers: Isaac Babel and Chaim Grade. I seem to start a new book, and then Ali sends me another, and I bookmark it only to return to it as the mood shifts. I do try to finish what I start, even if it takes me all season.

So I am soon to be off, to see all my old friends, my old cars, and to walk the beach at Northwest Harbor. Zoom calls do not replace the touch of a handshake and a kiss on the cheek.