How Things Change

The seagulls sounded off from the pink skies above. The bench beneath my legs was cold and damp from the brisk dewy morning. I didn’t mind. The waves whispered gentle tunes as they carefully battered the rocky sand on the beachfront. As I sipped at the mug of hot coffee between my fingers, I realized how wrinkly they had become for the first time. They reminded me of my grandmother.

Though I fled Cape Cod in my adult life I couldn’t help but come back home for retirement. Seeing the rest of the country and other parts of the world was all I could have asked for and I’m glad I have those experiences. But this salt air is in my blood. My family’s been braving the sea since before the United States existed. Making Falmouth home during the third wave of American immigration solidified my legacy.

The fiber of my being is weaved from strawberry farmers and fishermen. The succulence of berries on a hot summer day kiss the braving storms at sea that sting the skin. Calloused hands and community molded me. Though the landscape at my back is unrecognizable, the rocks and ocean water I face are unchanging.

I regret not doing more to save this place but what was there to do. I’m lucky enough to make my way home before mother nature takes its course and the landscape exists only for the fishes. My grandchildren may not be so lucky. My grandmother was lucky to fall before she could see what happened here. I am now her only relative that has been able to make it back to these sacred shores. In my decades of self-discovery and adventure, the rich and powerful have decimated its nature to build McMansions and shopping centers. Decimated its character and misconstrued its heritage. The cotton-candy, fish-fry, summer baseball Cape Cod she knew and loved has been dead for a long time.

Cape Cod isn’t rich people driving luxury sports cars and having more money than they know what to do with. It’s not neighborhoods scattered with empty houses for nine-months out of the year. It’s not the yacht that used to belong to Jimmy Buffet standing idle in the harbor. Cape Cod is blue collar. It’s Portuguese breakfast diner’s that always smell of fresh bread; where the waitresses know your name and linger at your table a little longer than average. It’s teenagers jumping off of bridges that are clearly marked with “do not trespass”. In the back of their mind, they’re worried if they’ll make it back after college graduation. If their friend will ever see recovery. But for now, they have fun. It’s generations of strawberry farmers and fishermen forced to abandon their posts and take up seasonal jobs in gas stations and restaurants to make sure the tourists are comfortable. Cape Cod looks like a pretty picture but below the surface is a story that tells the erasure of a working-class community in exchange for capital monotony.

It’s still the same in Autumn, after all these years. Once the New York City stockbrokers and Silicon Valley wash-a-shores make their way back home for the winter, Cape Cod shows itself again. Main Street’s a lot quieter. Young couples that live in the apartments above the shops linger beneath the lamp posts for sneaky kisses while walking their Pomeranian. Small children giggle on the playgrounds now that school is back in session. Racing on the monkey bars and throwing the dusty play yard mulch into each other’s hair. Trading hard labor for office jobs, parent’s kiss their kids on the heads before leaving for work, hiding their worry behind paying off the bills. Teenagers park at the beaches at night and smoke rises through their cracked windows. Giggles are muffled by the raging ocean waves that echo through the sandy parking lots. There’s a lot less litter and the trash cans are no longer overflowing with single-use plastic.

It’s the same sunrise that I remember all those years ago. The salty air still stings my nostrils the same way. The seagulls never gave up their tune, passing it down hundreds of generations to sing the same wistful song to me this morning. The land behind me is much more scarred with construction and my once soft skin is littered with new creases every day. But I know the truth about this land and its people, and it’s immortalized with me. Energy cannot be created or destroyed and even once myself and this peninsula cease to exist, it’s memories will remain in haunting eternity. Though it’s just a blip on the Universal timeline, it’s my blip and it means something. This coffee tastes exceptionally good today. The warmth of the sun is welcome on my aging skin and I’d be happy to die in this moment.