Verbatim: Nantucket Peepers

This week's submission comes from Robert Barsanti, entitled Peepers, and talks about the sounds around us as the spring and warmer months begin and the cold, grey winter ends.

Photo submitted by Robert Barsanti

Welcome to Verbatim, a re-telling of anything and everything on
Nantucket through your own words. We accept photos, writing, and pretty
much anything else that is an
expression and celebration of the community we live in and the beauty
around us.
This week's submission comes from Robert Barsanti in the
form of a delightful read highlighting the coming
of the summer months and the end of a long island winter.

Submissions may be sent to ackweb@plumtv.com, or dropped off at our office location in digital format at 4 North Water Street, Nantucket, MA 02554.

1: Peepers

I am waiting for the peepers.

In our backyard, a small wetlands fills with the loud little
amphibians once spring has started.
As soon as they get the first few warm nights, the frogs will start
peeping to one another. One little
peeper makes the toot of a child's whistle. A thousand of them drown out the Cape Air planes.

For all of their noise, I don't know anyone who loathes
them. I don't think Marine Home
Center carries "peeper poison" or anti-peeper signs. Noone I know, other than one biology
teacher, rounds them up for experiments.
If they disturb sleep, noone complains of it.

It may be that, for all of their noise, we like the
peepers. After the Melvillian
silence of the winter, the adolescent roars of frogs in love gets our hope out
of the closet. Like a Red Sox cap,
hope looks good in spring.

On the way out, winter drags its feet. It dawdles over coffee, cracks its
knuckles, and checks the addition.
The ice still hides in the shadows of the walls and in the high
grass. The wind is cold enough to
keep most of the kids off the playgrounds. The D.P.W.'s sand fills the streets and parking lots.

Back in September, I couldn't wait for winter to visit.
Winter held so much promise to me when I was stuck in traffic. Stuck on Sparks Avenue behind the
Escalades and the Hummers, I wanted the cold winds to blow them all back to
Connecticut and Hobe Sound. As Caliban was charged, I wanted it to clear the
island of its invaders and restore it to its "rightful" owners. In my ideal winter, I could walk Main
Street and see only familiar faces, read the books that had been accreting on
my bedroom table, and watch those storms blow in.

When winter did come, it snuck on-island sometime after
Halloween and spent the next four months lurking. During some years, we get a winter from Canada. The storms come spiraling up from Hatteras,
the cold air locks in over us and the snow swirls and drifts over harbor
ice. This year, the only snow came
on the calendar.

Snow is winter’s champagne; we all splurge and get a little
silly in it. Buildings, trash,
hedges and all are drunkenly transformed by the snow so the island becomes a party. Cemeteries become playgrounds, streets
become ski hills, and the storm becomes a story. This winter, there was no party. Our bad acts hung in front of us like blown trash in the
blackberry bushes.

Winter on Nantucket rests in browns and grays. The elms, the scrub oaks, the
blackberries are skeletal gray.
They clatter together in the wind.
Beneath them, the grass blows tan and hushed. The harbor freezes and night, then melts in the day. Out at the beaches, the clouds turn
purple in mid-afternoon and the great clouds of ocean ducks line the horizon. We measure the hours in darkness and
scars. The weeks leave in moving
vans.

So much of an island winter disappoints. Winters fireworks have been few and far
between. Teeth chattering, shingle
tearing, legendary nor’easters threaten every fortnight of so, then either
whirl majestically far out to sea and give the fish snow days or dive inland
and drench childrens’ dreams in forty five degree rain and wind. The ice hasn’t
been firm enough to allow for pond hockey or even a few wobbly steps. It has been a winter of mud, drizzle,
and silence.

Business has disappointed as well. As realty has slowed, so has the client dinner and the “Get
to Know You” lunch. I sat downtown
at a bar for a burger the other day, and talked politics with three realtors
for an hour or so. The chef, with
his New Orleans specials simmering on the stove, appeared every few minutes to
appraise the empty room and to upbraid the bartender for not pushing the
Jambalaya. This restaurant had
hoped for a decent winter. Several
others had given up the ghost, closed the doors, and hunkered down until their
workers and their customers returned in the spring.

Hopefully.

Doubt grows faster than the bills in January and February
The long running billion dollar banquet of island real estate may be down to a
few soft pieces of celery, a cold meatball, and some lonely slices of goose
liver pate. For weeks, the Land
Bank has racked up little money in transfer fees, because nothing was
transferring. The realtors play Minesweeper
and the lawyers make vacation plans. The air of Cliff Road and Tom Nevers has
been notably silent. You can hear
the belts tightening.

Hope can be a curse.
One bad summer became two, which begat three, four, and five. Pretty soon, even the dimmest can pick
up a pattern. The new commercial lease arrives in
February, then hope and doubt both sit at the table, looking through the fine
print. Hope carries the advantage
of habit and history: doubt holds the numbers. You wish in one hand, you spit in the other. Meanwhile, the roof leaks in heavy
rain, the kids aren’t doing so well in school, and your neighbor just moved to
Lenox. When do you stop hoping?

Now, I hope for a good spring. The crocuses have started to
poke up in the Denby Real Estate garden.
Six meadowlarks have been spotted looking for a summer rental close to
town. The osprey have returned to
the water views, the oyster catchers scout for restaurants and the cormorants
hunt for a mooring. Daisuke and
his amazing gyroball will be appearing regularly at Fenway. The Flying Hammer Squads are back on
the roofs and walls of the town.
The potholes and ponds of Nantucket roads grow larger and larger.

But, still no
peepers.

I have confidence that they will be here with the daffodils
and the antique cars. Like Ariel,
they will call the sailors to the shore.
Already, the first seasonal residents have slipped back onto the island
and are making plans to re-open the restaurants, inns, and shops of the
summer. The help-wanted ads have
doubled and tripled in the last few weeks as landscapers and innkeepers get
ready for the summer onslaught. The Stop and Shop has more and more unfamiliar
faces, both from Connecticut, Guatemala and Jamaica. Their buzz is mostly unintelligible to this Anglo, but
welcome nonetheless.

In spring, I look forward to seeing and hearing from all of
seasonal residents again, whether they be migrant lawnmowers, plutocrat
golfers, or peepers. They see the
island as a fresh and brave new world of waves and seagrass and ocean
breezes. In their eyes, the dull
landscape I have been imprisoned in, brightens. The island, to them, is a place
of relaxation, redefinition, and riches.
After a winter of mini-malls and inter-office memos, they come out here
to the dream of Nantucket. And
greet it with a lusty peep.