The Brunswick was quiet this Tuesday afternoon. The air was cool. The sun was warm and volleyball on the beach was the center of attention. Few noticed Mr. Donovan.
Game On
Ben Kilcollins was playing to a quite but engaged crowd. Ballads, mostly, and his enthusiasm was undiminished by the sometimes lack of applause. That’s how things go sometimes.
To my right (at the vast sun-warmed concrete bar) sat a sixties-something gentleman with his wife.
“That’s life then, isn’t it?” he muttered. The brogue was unmistakable.
“Hmmmm?” I replied.
“Out there,” he said, pointing at the beach.
I was puzzled, “What?”
“Her,” her said.
The girl in the bikini?”
“Well, yes, but more than her. Her, too, but the sea of it. All of her friends. That guitar fellow. You know, all of it. The sea and all of it. The harmony of it it all.”
Suddenly, I knew what Mr. Donovan meant.
The Gals
Funny, the folks you meet at the Brunswick. The harmony of it all.
Summer’s coming to a close on the coast of Maine. It’s been wonderful. Full of wonder, that is. And folks like Mr Donovan and the nurses who grabbed an afternoon in late August to play volleyball between the shadows of a passing summer become a part of the harmony of The Brunswick. That’s the bliss.
As my late friend Joseph Campbell would have put it: “Follow your bliss. It’s all that truly matters.”
Thanks, Elena. Thanks, Deanna.
And thank you, Mr. Donovan, wherever you are.
... and the Guys
