Gloucester

Deb and I voluntarily parted for two weeks. It wasn’t like any parting I had experienced before, and – like anyone who has lived long enough has – I have experienced too much parting. This one, though, came thanks to T.S. Eliot. Yes, the dead poet. It wasn’t necrophilia, or different interpretations of The Waste Land. It boiled down to his house. His family, which had roots in Boston and money in the St. Louis, had built a summer retreat in Gloucester MA, and the Eliot family often gathered there during the hot Midwest summers. In the years since Eliot’s death, and the changing hands of the property, and the wild success of the musical Cats, based on some light verse by Eliot, the Gloucester house became a retreat for writers.

In order to secure an invitation to stay at the house, you have to be referred by someone who has already taken retreat time there. I don’t know how the whole thing began, or even how long ago, but our friend Lawrence Kessinich told Deb about it, and then she told me. We each applied and each were accepted for a week in Gloucester, perhaps a hundred yards from the ocean. Eliot House has three floors, 8 bedrooms, perhaps as many baths. Originally the house enjoyed a line of sight to the water, but the nearby mansions have obscured that pleasure. The rooms overlook rocky grounds, animal life, and massive quiet, perfection for a writer – or two.

We had hoped to schedule our weeks together, but the rooms were only available for consecutive weeks. We planned our time so that Deb would go first and I would follow, but we would have the weekend to overlap. We would each get a workweek to write and a vacation together between. But even perfection has limits. I drove Deb up to Gloucester to begin her time and met Dana Hawkes, who runs the retreat on partnership with the Eliot Foundation in London. Dana and her husband had bought and remodeled the house and together with the Eliot Foundation they provide the retreat and the food for the time there for free, within some rules. And one of those rules, Dana explained to us as we toured the house, was no partners.

Ugh. Understandable, but Ugh.

After a brief struggle, I agreed to delay my time in the Eliot House until the Sunday Deb left. We spent an entire week apart, Deb writing hard while I helped a friend leave the country. We missed one another terribly, but we spoke and texted several times a day. And then on Sunday I drove back up to Gloucester and Deb and I went out for breakfast at Sweet Magnolia, on Main Street, right next door to the one Gloucester restaurant we knew. We had a spectacular breakfast. The place felt very much like the hippie/alternative breakfast places I first discovered on Cape Cod, about which I will write another time. Deb has a Florentine benedict, with spinach and tomato in place of the traditional Canadian bacon. I had a substantial platter of hash and eggs, all prepared impeccably. They made the hash from smoked pork and shredded sweet potato, served with the thick salty-sweet slab of corn bread. Gloucester is still a fishing town, but also a tourist destination and a hideout for the wealthy, like the Eliots years ago.

I took Deb to the train a half an hour away, so she could begin her week without me at home, as I had done. We kissed a thousand times before, during and after breakfast. And unlike other partings, we felt this one just brought us closer. I’m looking forward to getting back to our life together – but first: a week of writing!