On the Island Again

First, apologies for my absence from this space. These have been busy months of work, managing eldercare for my dad and his wife, reckoning with my own body’s bone density, and dealing with house renovations at home.

But now we are finally back here on the island.

First, for those who read a previous post about why you should never build a house on an island, I have updates. I stand by my advice. Just don’t. But if you are as delusional as I was in the fall of 2020, take heart—there is some good news.

I have now visited the site twice. First with Clark to check out the capped basement: dry as a desert, smooth concrete, no cracks, eight feet deep, no granite occlusions. Our contractor calls it a unicorn on this island. Now the basement holds the items we saved from the original farmhouse, neatly stacked. Hey, if all else fails, we can move into the basement. Our contractor talked me out of windows—leaks and more leaks—so it would be like living in a cave. “It already smells like a basement,” Clark said. And I guess that’s cave smell too.

My second visit was with O, who has spent part of almost every one of their thirty summers here, including in utero. I have thought of this project as a family legacy, to make the home my parents would have loved to have but could never afford. I know this will be a money pit, but it will be our money pit.

O loved it. The view as glorious as ever: the long harbor, the lighthouse, sun sparkling on the water. The leaves on the big maple we’ve made effort to save rustled in the afternoon breeze in a way that always mesmerizes me. We perched on the soft pink granite boulder dropped here millennia ago as a glacier retreated.

Goddammittohell, it’s so beautiful.

“Don’t give up,” O said, reading my mind. “It will be great. We can hang a swing in the tree.”

I am told that this summer has been super-dry. Some of the trees are turning early, some leaves are curled and wilted. Lawns are brown. So perhaps no mushrooms this year. I’ve been here in wet and dry summers; the cycles go on and hopefully this ecosystem is resilient enough to rebound once rains come.

Our contractor is looking at this fall/winter to start framing. And Clark tells me that framing is easy.

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You can find out more about my memoirs Perfection and Eva and Eve here and purchase here.

I work privately with memoir writers. You can reach out via my website: juliemetz.com.