Nantucket.

I’m not sure what it is about Nantucket that I love so much. I just identify myself with it. I identify my past with it. I associate fond memories with the island, with the landscape, the look and feel of the island, and with the history. I associate the good parts of my childhood with Nantucket. But in truth, very little of my childhood was actually spent there, and my identity as one who vacationed there as a child is really based more on my sister’s memories, and my mother’s memories, than of my own.

My sister and mother talk often of Nantucket and of their memories there. They stayed at 2 Ash Street, and they would go back with my uncle Barry on extended visits during my sister’s youth. I myself recall being there only two or three times as a young person, meaning pre-college, and I have been back only three times post-college. While that may seem like quite a few times to go to the same vacation spot, it’s not, really, not if you compare it to how many times I have been to Crystal Lake in New Hampshire, or how many times I have been to Cape Cod. Yet somehow I feel like Nantucket is a piece of me, or that I am a piece of it, and I hold my own vague and foggy memories of the island, along with the stories that my sister and mother tell, close to me. Doug asked me what my family does when we are on Nantucket, as he wanted to relive the family experience, and I answered him with things that my family has done, but not necessarily things that I have done, and so these things are not necessarily my traditions. It’s my sister who raves about the cheese soup and curly fries at the Brotherhood, yet we went here in search of those foods (only the fries are still on the menu) in order to recreate this supposed family tradition. It’s my mother who talks of the house at 2 Ash Street, and of the memories there; I never was inside, was not even born when there was any tangible connection to the house. Yet I stood outside it this weekend and Doug took my photo, capturing for us this family tradition, this link to the family past, that I was never a part of.

I was eager to take Doug out to ‘Sconset, to roam that more remote part of the island, but I have no real memories of being there, not until that one early January day in 1998 when my mother, brother, uncle, and I flew to Nantucket, just for the day, and stood on the windy ‘Sconset beach, staring out at the winter ocean. I think we stayed out near ‘Sconset once when I was young, in a house rented by my uncle, the whole brood of us, cousins and all. All that I remember of that trip was someone wearing a jersey nightgown with blue piping around the hems, blue whales on a white background blowing red waterspouts. And of eating popcorn before dinner, my first real introduction to appetizers. And of there being a pond near the rented house, and of there being a path we would walk down, lined with prickly sea grass and beach roses, to get to the ocean, which was bitterly, bitterly cold. Of course, I could be confusing this path with the path that we would walk to get to the beach at my aunt’s Connecticut cottage on the Long Island Sound; there were roses along that path, too. But these memories I associate with Nantucket, so to me they are the Island. And now, I have to somehow fit Doug into these memories.

This time on Nantucket Doug and I saw the Sankaty lighthouse, which was never part of the Nantucket of my memory. We rode Vinos along Milestone Drive and Polpis Road, two roads that meant nothing to me before this trip. Two mornings I woke up early and jogged out to Brant Point and walked along the small beach there, watching the fog veil the harbor; jogging and Brant Point were never parts of my Nantucket history. Neither was staying at the Sherburne Inn. Neither was dining at American Seasons. Not renting scooters, the Old Mill, the Quaker Burial Ground, or going to Easter service at the Congregational Church, either. These were new experiences, adult experiences, that now I have to somehow mix with the picture of Nantucket that I have had in my mind, that of my youth, my family’s past, my life without Doug. What does Nantucket mean now? How do I now relate to this place? I’m still not sure what to think, or, more importantly, what to feel. But at least these memories are all mine now. Whatever experiences I have now I share with Doug, and I won't be able to confuse them with stories from my mother or stories from my sister. They are our experiences and our memories, and Nantucket can be our place now, too.