Northwest Passages

We smelled the sea before we saw it, a fishy tang I, a lifelong landlubber, associate with good health and vigor. I followed my brother-in-law’s car past conifers and expensive houses, down a steep hill to a cove on Puget Sound. For the first time I saw snow falling on a water-filled swimming pool. The beach would make for rugged swimming though exhibitionists take an annual dip on New Year’s Day. The wind off the silver-gray water was the coldest I’ve felt in more than four years, and the beach was black and white, a crunchy impasto of barnacles, driftwood and pulverized shells. My brother-in-law’s dog joined the pack already chasing tennis balls and exploring each others’ nether regions. We saw no seals but found a dead crab my 7-year-old, in his words, “dissected” with a stick. Everything reminded me of the “Proteus” chapter in Ulysses.

The locals we saw at the beach are indistinguishable from any random gaggle of Americans but for the higher density of those who appear headed for the ski slope. Caps on men are de rigueur, as are fleecy jackets, wraparound sunglasses with straps, conspicuous boots and a day or two of whiskers. Hearty laughter is encouraged. “I say,” Thoreau writes, a little priggishly, “beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.”

We returned to the library for more books and to make copies of Michael’s school records so we can enroll him for his final six weeks of second grade. The library bookshop was open, and the proprietor was a nervous, twitchy man who spoke in a whisper and averted his eyes when I greeted him. As we poked about, a small, elderly woman with a disproportionally loud voice tried to engage the shy man in conversation. He wilted further. Clearly, she was a regular and he dreaded her arrival but she wouldn’t relent. She wanted a book spied during a previous visit but was unable to identify by author, title, publisher or subject matter. The shy man whispered apologies and I thought of “Bookshop Memories,” Orwell’s 1936 account of his time as a clerk in a London second-hand shop:

“Many of the people who came to us were of the kind who would be a nuisance anywhere but have special opportunities in a bookshop. For example, the dear old lady who `wants a book for an invalid’ (a very common demand, that), and the other dear old lady who read such a nice book in 1897 and wonders whether you can find her a copy. Unfortunately she doesn’t remember the title or the author’s name or what the book was about, but she does remember that it had a red cover.”