The Great Wicomico River
They say you can never go back home again.
I took my family to the old summer place in Virginia last month. We made the same drive that we used to make thirty years ago, from Waynesboro to Richmond, through Rappahannock, and on to Wicomico Church, Virginia. You turn where Mr. Watkins store used to be where we would buy penny candy and memories. Then we pass the signpost with all the inhabitants’ names (Bass and Lauber, Mann and Clemens). As we drove down the road that runs beside the water we would catch glimpses of the River on the left and the Bay on the right and pretty soon we were at the little cabin at the end of the road.
It was the place my Uncle Billy bought in the early 60’s, when he was about my current age. They called it En Da Tar, and it is near the confluence of the Great Wicomico River and the Chesapeake Bay. Uncle Billy died some years ago and Aunt Jean last year. But the River and the road and the cabin are still there. It seemed strange for them to be gone but the cabin still there. Until I realized that the River and the beach and the sky would be there long after I have died too. Then it seemed really strange!
Uncle Billy was a big man with a ready smile and glitteringly mischievous eyes that peeked out from under the bushiest eyebrows I had ever seen. He got up at dawn every day, even when he didn’t have to and would walk his little dog down the path to the flag pole, run the flag up, and see who saluted. Then it was up to Sandy Point and back and by then there would be some action at the cabin.
Aunt Jean arose later and had a smile on her face most of the time. She had decorated the place in a nautical motif and always had a suggestion for us boys when we got bored. They graciously opened their home to my Dad and Mom and the four of us boys for a week or two every summer and we just loved it. I was really looking forward to seeing the place again and recapturing some of the memories.
When we arrived this time, we found the white rail fence that Dad and us boys scraped and repainted in the summer heat is still there. And the Winston home up the street where “the girls” stayed (I can see them still in my minds eye, all blond hair and long legs running and laughing along the beach). We would approach one another, then back away, and then approach again. Thrilled and scared all at once, o the excitement of youth.
The Wicomico River still smells the same. It smells of crabs and salt. Of wind and sun and mildew and water. I could even smell a shower stall that used to be on the beach 30 years ago, long gone now, that smelled of mildew and well water, calling and calling us as we got out of the water all sandy and salty. And when the kids and I went swimming and I tasted the River again, I remembered the sting of the stinging nettles, wrapped around our legs and wrists (Momma! Get the baking soda and hug me good ‘til it stops hurting).
It was all the same, nothing had changed. I felt the stubble of sea grass on my feet as we crossed the hot sand beach and I found myself checking the pilings of the docks for crabs again. All the same. Then we got the pictures back from the drugstore.
There I was, on the pier, just like I remembered. But the skinny young man with the shock of sandy brown hair and shining eyes wasn’t me; it was my son, Rob. And the beautiful, bikini-ed young lady wasn’t one of the Winston girls, it was my daughter Lee. And there I was. The pot-bellied, gray-bearded old sailor, wise in the ways of the sea, (or at least we kids used to think so) was me.
And come to think of it, I am a pretty big guy now. And I do get up every morning and walk the dog, and get the paper and wait for every one else to get up. And my eyebrows have started to grow a bit, and though I work at it, I have grown a little thick around the middle.
As I held the pictures from Eckerds in my big hands, I realized that I had become just like my Uncle Billy. It was my turn to look off into the distance and know what was likely around the next bend in time. It was my turn to be bored with the stuff that so thrilled me as a boy (can’t we stay just a little while longer, Dad, this is so cool!). So that’s what it felt like to KNOW what Dad and Uncle Billy knew back then.
But on the River, I felt just the same as that free and open little boy of thirty years ago and I didn’t remember learning a SECRET somewhere along the line. Sure I know more about what works and doesn’t work in life. I know how to catch those Winston girls for instance. And how to make happy families. And what to do when the feelings aren’t so happy. And how to survive the storms that blow in off the River.
Now that I think of it, I guess they did know some secrets back then, and I have learned my share too. But what I learned this summer is that behind the wizened old eyes of my uncle and my father (and behind my own forty-five year old eyes) there’s a little boy still dancing in the sun, thrilled to be alive and taking pleasure in life.
I learned too that what I so fondly hoped to recapture on this trip back to the River didn’t have to do with the boats or cabins or sand or water. What I missed were the people who populated that place for me so long ago. And they all still live brightly in my memory.
They say you can never go back home again. I guess not, if you’re already there.
Dave Seward
August 1999
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