The Island Home shuddered. In a few moments, it would do its soft rebound at the pier. The onshore pulleys and whatnot would squeal and clunk into place. It had been fourteen months since I’d floated off-Island, but there’s no forgetting ingrained sensations. Everything would be fine, yes? Inhale, exhale.        

Two months into my retirement from caregiving, the ties that bound me had vanished. I was free again to hit the road, the skies, the oceans.  

A hometown friend had asked: “When are you coming to New York?” Not yet. Too full of memories.  

My Bay Area bestie: “California?” I do owe you a visit. Maybe later.

Someone said, “Come with us to Tanzania!” A third of the way around the planet? Oh, hell no.   

So many options. Islands of the palm tree sort. The steadfast places of family roots, ever sprouting with little unmet cousins. Global hiking, biking, and boating excursions, pitched in fat catalogues. I had been pitching those catalogues straight into the post office trash bin for years. There’d been no point in swooning over adventures while in caregiving mode.   

All of that was over now. Still, my boots were full of lead. Lately, the closest thing to a temptation of an Island escape was the underwear and pajama outlet in the strip mall off Exit 90 on the Connecticut Turnpike. Pitiful.

This was normal, my bereavement counselor assured me. In grief, some people burst forth right away with pent-up wanderlust. Others, like me, just want to nest for a while. To hug a familiar place, if not that familiar person. Okay then. Fetal position it is.       

Now and then, though, the Ghost of Journeys Past took my hand for some time-traveling. That bike tour across the Loire Valley in France. Snorkeling in The Baths of the British Virgin Islands. The Door of No Return on Goree Island off the coast of Senegal. The hot springs at the foot of the Arenal volcano in Costa Rica. The quaint skiing village of Zermatt, Switzerland. The emperor’s summer palace in Beijing, China. Safari in the Maasai Mara National Reserve in Kenya. The pyramids outside Mexico City where I met that handsome guy from Barbados…I digress. The point is the memories warmed me like fluffy socks and dared me not to smile.  

The ghost kept this up until I looked in the mirror one day and said, “Oh, please.” Time for some tough love.  

So here I was on the ferry. Destination: exotic, faraway Falmouth. Just for the day. Baby steps.        

Had anything changed over there on the other side? Would those jaws of the ferry yawn apart to an inky panorama of outer space and the overture from Star Wars? Or a stampede à la Jurassic Park? Maybe the Statue of Liberty scene from Planet of the Apes? The silly stuff was just a masking tool. On the real side: would I remember how to navigate out of the terminal area? Could I still negotiate intersections with traffic lights and multiple lanes? During rush hour, no less? Why was this so hard?

The eight-minute drive from the ferry to the car dealership was uneventful. An all-day recall fix was the excuse for the trip in the first place. “Now I guess you’ll spend the day shopping,” said the woman behind the service desk. She knows how customers from the Islands do.    

Indeed, there was a time when these day-trip opportunities fired me up. Christmas Tree Shops! HomeGoods! Let me at ’em! On this day, though? After fourteen months away from retail emporiums any larger than Shirley’s on Vineyard Haven’s State Road? Well, I supposed I could use a few things. Like a new pair of jeans.  

The rack at T.J.Maxx stretched far and away. Wide-leg, skinny, straight, boot-cut, flare, and so on. I hauled a half-dozen options to the dressing room, none of which quite worked. In a Vineyard store, lack of success would have been achieved a whole lot faster. And with an offer of help from a storekeeper. One who likely knows my face and possibly even my name. If I managed to score a find among her meager selection, there’d be no checkout line akin to the TSA queue at Logan airport. No twenty minutes of snaking my way past kettle chips, earbuds, and other impulse grabs toward anonymous Cashier No. 10. No glazed eyes or sagging arches when all was done. I would even be able to locate my parked car.  

It felt really good to check in with the nice guys in the shack in Woods Hole for the ferry trip home. And to wait in Row 4, or whatever, in the happy-to-see-me glow of a winter sun about to sink behind an Elizabeth Island. A bag of Pie in the Sky popovers rode shotgun, wooing me to reach in and pinch. Once in the womb of the boat, it dawned on me that I’d failed to top off the gas tank. A ding on my Islander creds. Still, I was on my way home to my nest. All good.

In the two years since Operation Falmouth, I have made some wayfaring progress: flying to D.C. for the sad but warm occasion of a funeral. (Incidentally, since when do people zig-zag up ramps
to board planes at MVY?) That overdue visit to California, to forest bathe amongst the sequoias. A rousing Airbnb getaway in Georgia with old classmates. Next up: a first-time trip to Hawaii. Lately, the South of France, an age-old itch, has begun to feel intentional. Acadia National Park in Maine has been whispering in my ear too.

Meantime, my renovation contractor said: “Go look at some kitchen cabinets. Like at Home Depot.”  

Uh-oh. There’d be that driving-in-America thing again, the tallest travel hurdle of them all. Unlike Falmouth, a Home Depot trek would entail real highways, tractor-trailers, and speed freaks. Signs with multi-directional arrows would shout “Pick a lane, fast!” 

I punked out and chose the Home Depot location in Hyannis. I could reach that one the slow way, along two-lane roads resembling the gentle byways of the Island – not counting interruptions by strip malls, quick-lube places, and fast-food joints. Apparently, the preservation of roadside vistas along Route 28 was never a thing.  

Nor was the protection of whatever landscape was eaten by the big-box jungle of the Hyannis commercial district. Nature may reclaim it someday, now that cyber-shopping is king. More dismaying than a big-box store is a big-box store devoid of customers, workers, life. Already, some Hyannis seas of hard asphalt are sprouting weeds where cars once parked.     

Back to Woods Hole and the welcome committee of two in the check-in shack. The protocol didn’t fail me this time: I gassed up first. Acadia returned to mind as I crossed the water. Less asphalt, more loveliness, no doubt. I could woman-up and do an interstate highway trip up there. Maybe. And maybe not.