First posted in the Tri Town Transcript Jan 25, 2019
By Esther C. Baird
I found myself there again. My brain is simply wired to go one way, the shortest way, the way that makes the most sense, the way that I always go, but a way that is not available to me any longer. And my brain can’t find a new way.
Deep metaphysical musings? New year’s resolutions broken already? I mean maybe, but mostly I just can’t get home now that Lockwood Lane is closed.
I text my husband pictures each time I find myself at the road closed sign. Each time I have to turn my car around, with my house almost in sight, and drive a loopy loop around Topsfield and Boxford to re-route myself.
He replies, “again?”
Yes. Again. I can’t internalize a new way to go home.
My day consists of a triangle between Boxford, West Peabody and Ipswich. Home, school, work, errands. Lockwood Lane is the connector in my triangle.
I drive my triangle so much that my phone predicts my next move. “You will be at the church in 17 minutes.”
Sounds about right.
“You will be home in 12 minutes, where you will whip up dinner, even though it’s 10 a.m., because you won’t be home again until 8 p.m.”
Hurrah, crockpot delight again!
“You will be home in 5,000 minutes due to traffic trying to cross Route 1, and this will be highlighted by the heavy silence of a tired teenager who lost her game.”
Can’t wait. Sign me up.
“You will be at school in 5 minutes, but you are not yet pleasant enough to go inside.”
My phone doesn’t lie.
But now … Lockwood Lane. My driving Feng Shui is all off. My phone is annoyed with me because I can’t get home properly.
Look, I’m no public-safety-engineer-ground-safety-water-management-specialist person. But since we moved to Boxford almost nine years ago, it has been one project after another to try and contain the mighty roaring waters and rapids that flow through here, lapping at our front doors, surging over our roads, making us sandbag our patios … or perhaps, just short of that calamity, at least monitoring the small, still, pools that breed mosquitoes.
Either way — issues abound.
First we had the new pedestrian bridge off of Lockwood Lane into the forest. The small trickle of water that burbles down from the Middleton Road/Bare Hill area is hardly more than a coalesced marsh. Nevertheless, we got a sturdier bridge that secretly thinks it’s a climbing wall. If there is any snow or ice the pitch of the bridge requires crampons and a belay rope; apologies to the walkers who weren’t ready to reenact the Hillary Step, there’s always the Middleton Road entrance.
Which of course gets its own mention, since last summer there was the Middleton Road project that provided nonstop entertainment for those of us who lived nearby. The constant hum of the generator added an especially nice counter melody to the peepers and summer crickets. Looks like they did a good job. They built a bridge that looks just like the last one, but I guess with a new culvert beneath, to again, direct all that water that sometimes is almost ankle deep. This fall my husband and I walked over the new bridge and listened to the water … bubble? Tinkle? Dare I say, stagnate? I hummed “Bridge Over Troubled Waters,” since if we couldn’t have a bridge over some sort of fast flowing water we could at least call them troubled. I’m sure they aspire to be rushing or rolling, and it’s important to have dreams.
And now Lockwood Lane. To be fair, the water under that bridge is a true stream, or, I guess technically a brook given its name: Fish Brook. It’s a bridge the actually spans consistently flowing water. Which means it’s actually doing the hard work of being a real bridge. Sometimes in the fall, but especially in the spring, it’s deep enough for fishing and to produce a real, running water sound. And that running water was enough to erode the bridge and bring us to the present closure situation.
“You will be home in 20 minutes, even though you are 10 feet from your house, because you can’t remember a simple road closure, and insist on being difficult about it.”
Did I mention my phone and I were not getting along right now?
In the meantime, I need to learn, and relearn, at every sort of cognitive level, that you can’t always get home by taking the shortest path.