Raised Wild

In a half finished house, in the olden days.

Growing up, we were raised wild in a half-finished house with a view of the River and breathtaking sunsets.

In those first few winters, my parents only used the wood stove as our primary heat source.

I remember getting out of a bath and my mother standing me in front of the wood stove, wrapped in a towel to get heated and dried off.

The oil burner would be turned on on very chilly mornings, and I remember standing over the vents in a flannel Little House on the Prarie type nightgown - having the heat flow captured and billowed about my tiny frame and giggling at the warmth and silliness of the venture.

After my father left, I remember having to stack the cordwood in the fall and using an axe to make kindling. My mother was afraid of using the stove and not being allowed to turn the heat on when we came home alone after school.

I remember my father took most of the furniture when he left, and having a plastic trash bag as a window curtain and only a wired bulb for light in the bathroom.

I remember in the summers, the house was filled with fleas from Molly, the Scottie Dog, and Sophie, the fluffy calico cat.

Daily going into the basement to get jugs of water and wiping off fleas from my ankles once back in the kitchen.

We needed to buy or fill water jugs for consumption. A tap on the causeway in front of the lodge restaurant was where most islanders got their water spring through fall.

The Jug filling process in our home consisted of using old water jugs, going to the causeway tap to refill them, and then putting them in the trunk of my mother’s old bomb-beater-rusted car.

It felt like an adventure when I was young, and as I got older, it felt like a shame.

My mom might buy more full jugs from the market in the winter. But while the weather was good and before the tap at the causeway was shut off, that is where we got our water.

Looking back, I don’t know why they didn’t just get a huge container and put it in the kitchen or the basement. But it was always a haphazard process in our house, never efficiency or forethought.

The house water was from a brackish well, only suitable for bathing and quick to rust out pipes and water heaters.

There was always sand in the house and dog and cat hair.

Molly the Scottie Dog tied to a large old-fashioned milk can - if we went to my grandmother’s in Dorchester for a weekend.

Tied to that can on a short leash, with newspaper spread to one side and water and food to the other.

Coming home and the smell of dog piss and poop, Molly frenzied and whimpering to see us. Sophie, the cat, is unscathed.

When Sophie first found us, it was the day my paternal grandfather died. She was up on the roof mewing at the house on Calumet, where we lived until November of 78.

My father, having grown up in my grandfather’s veterinary practice-did not like cats. He had had to manhandle them too much and knew how ferocious they could be.

But this cat - while it always seemed to freak him out a bit - he felt was a reincarnation of - or sent to us by his father- and we were allowed to keep her.

I remember wanting to name her fluffy tail and mom saying what about Sophie - and Sophie it was.

Mom always having good taste in names.

When we first moved into that house with plywood floors, countertops, un-trimmed windows, and an unfinished deck, the cat got confused and wandered far into the beach parking lot.

I remember watching from the window my father driving over to the lot and scooping the cat into the car - one of the few fond memories I have of my father.