TWO POTS OF GOLD

By Jane Lamb

If there’s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, which end is it? And what’s at the other end? I’d never heard anyone ask, nor had the question ever occurred to me. Not long ago, the answer came unbidden. I found myself paraphrasing Edna St. Vincent Millay. But unlike Edna, I was not burning my life’s candle away, double time. “My rainbow glows at both ends,” I chanted silently. I had found that legendary treasure at both feet of a high-altitude “rainbow,” a flight from West Coast to East. I had made the journey many times before, always thrilling to actually see the proverbial “sea to shining sea” from the air. Maybe, without my knowing, the pots had been filled with silver, if not gold. But this time was different.

In the past, I had traveled westward from my home in Maine to visit my daughter and her family in California. Two years ago I reached that time of life when all that can be lived in one mode has been accomplished. The old homestead where my children had grown up and their kids had romped with their cousins was no longer the scene of holiday feasts, now in the hands of the next generation. Grandchildren had grown up, and great-grandchildren were arriving. The big house and extensive gardens were getting beyond me. My work and community activities had run their course. The cold, snowy winters I once had relished had lost their charm.

So I tucked my memories away and moved three thousand miles to begin the next installment. Happily, my new life is as full as the old one. California’s North Coast, with its evergreen forests, magnificent coastline, chill sea winds, fishing and logging, artists and tourists, is as much like Maine as another place could be, without the snow and ice. I’m getting used to the wet winters, rainless summers, and different species of birds, trees, and flowers.

I settled into my snug little house among souvenirs of my old one. I took up my role as matriarch of four generations of my near and dear. I got acquainted with my neighbors and found new ways to participate in the community. I made a new garden. I finished the book I had contracted to write for an East Coast publisher. And of course, I kept in close touch with the family and friends I had left behind. I couldn’t have felt more blessed.

But it wasn’t until my book was published and I could combine book signings with three weeks of happy reunions that I learned the full extent of my blessings. The fleeting pleasures of corresponding by letter, email, and phone paled beside the joys of seeing flesh and blood faces light up in warm welcome, hearing the distinctive timbres of friends’ voices, and sharing real live hugs. My son and his family cosseted me unstintingly. I was wined and dined, toasted and celebrated. I saw everyone I had hoped to see and, to my surprise, got to know some of them better than I had before. By serendipitous chance, I ran into others I’d never expected to revisit and was glad of it.

My beloved home state was as generous as my friends. It was May, and the long, hesitant northern spring was slowly coming awake. Lilacs bloomed in every dooryard. On the hills and mountains, trees were sharply outlined globes of tender green, delicate pink, and gauzy gray among bands of dark evergreens, a veritable gallery of luminist paintings. Fields and roadsides in soft rain and glorious sunshine were as lush as the Emerald Isle (surely the work of the globe-trotting leprechauns guarding those pots of gold). Barely visible through evocative fog, surf pounded on granite with a beat unique to the Maine coast. There was nothing more to wish for.

I rejoice in an abundance of riches. My treasure is laid up in different styles, with more in common than I had guessed, as golden at one end of the rainbow as at the other. 

 

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