A sweet family visit

How my west coast visitors connected me to my east coast home

Vineyard Haven is my home, though I’m not from here. I will forever be a washashore, but I love this island. Still, I miss my family. For years I’ve imagined introducing Martha’s Vineyard to them, but they live far away, and getting here isn’t easy.

I’m lucky to have grown up close with aunts, uncles, and cousins, and to have stayed in touch with them. I’ve traveled west for our bi-annual reunions, but no one had come east since 2011, and some had never even been to New England.

We were so much younger then… 1967

Every year, when the forsythia and daffodils bring their sunny yellow greetings, I want them to see it, too. Walking home along Main Street, catching glimpses of bright blue water between the white buildings, or wandering the beach from Owen Little to the ferry, I wish they could see what I see: the rocks and shells, the growing number of boats on the water, and the big sky that reminds me of our grandparents’ homestead in Montana. Even at Cronig’s, buying groceries, I imagine stocking up for visiting family and cooking meals together while stories are told for the first or hundredth time.

Martha’s Vineyard and the west coast don’t have much in common beyond the water. I wanted my family to experience this place. I also wanted everyone to see me where I live, as though they couldn’t fully know me unless they could picture me at home in this landscape.

Now that we cousins are the eldest generation - and some of us have already passed - that now-or-never feeling was creeping up on me. So I arranged a get together here on MV.

I rented a big house near town and the water, just blocks from mine, and last Sunday the cousins who could make the trip arrived. A few couldn’t manage the journey and were deeply missed, but there were still plenty of us.

For me it was gratifying to know there was something new for them to discover here. On her way to the island, one cousin texted from the ferry terminal to say she had just tried chowder for the first time in her life. At the end of the week, a few people tasted their first lobster rolls.

My cousin seeing what I see (photo by author)

My daughter and her beau helped cook and drive cars. She also scanned an impressive pile of family trees, poems, eulogies, and stories stretching back a hundred years. So many ways to be remembered, identified, connected.

(Photo: Emma Rose Mead)

The week itself was wonderfully simple. We cooked and ate together, wandered around town, drove along the stone walls of Chilmark, and rode the bus through Oak Bluffs and Edgartown and back to Vineyard Haven. We spent the week drifting along together: walking, talking, napping, eating (Rosewater, Mo’s, Art Cliff, Offshore Ale, Menemsha…) and exclaiming over the beautiful views. We visited the MV Museum and multiple landmarks, without much of an agenda. Without planning to, we stepped outside ordinary life for a little while, and felt revived by the break.

Aquinnah was one of many spectacular destinations (photo: Emma Rose Mead)

Yesterday morning, the cousins boarded the ferry home. We took group photos at the landing, something I’ve watched other families do for years. Now it was my turn. I cried watching them leave, but I also felt deeply happy and satisfied.

Having my family here, in the place where I’ve built my life, had the unexpected effect of making me feel landed. It turns out I just needed my people to travel three thousand miles to see me here at home.

A good sign (photo: Emma Rose Mead)

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