Like the white sails of the Sound,
Hast thou seen the years drift by,
From the dreamful, dim profound
To a goal beyond the eye.

Last week I was driving in my hometown– passing the Falmouth Green so that I could turn left on to Locust Street which eventually turns into Woods Hole Road. It’s summertime, and so of course right now we have lots more traffic than we do during any other time of the year. I had to wait my turn before I could turn left, a couple of cars back– and in doing so I happened to turn my head to the house at my right. There in the front yard was a white sign that read, “Birthplace of Katharine Lee Bates 1859-1929”.  

I kind of did a double take.  Anyone who is from Falmouth and is even halfway paying attention knows that Katharine Lee Bates, author of America The Beautiful, was from Falmouth. But I had no idea that this spot here was her actual birthplace.  

I didn’t even know that Katharine Lee Bates wrote a poem about Falmouth. To be more honest, I didn’t know much else other than the fact that she wrote America The Beautiful. I guess that this is kind of to be expected—the fact that I have nothing more than a glossing awareness of the cultural points of curiosity around my hometown. I think it’s our natural inclination to be outwardly curious, and instead plan beyond our home base to see and learn about new things.  And perhaps it’s the same for people like me who are adults but are still operating from Falmouth—but I know that it is only now that I find myself more curious about where I’m from.

On this trip while home I also went out to the National Seashore. I can tell you that it’s only the third time that I have been there—and all trips happened while in my 40s. I recall that when I joined Falmouth High School as a freshman (at that time Mashpee had no high school so we were zippered in with the Falmouth kids as freshman), I learned that the Falmouth kids had taken a class trip to the National Seashore.  As for us, all I recall was going to the salt marsh and coming back to school smelling very much like low tide. And so, the National Seashore was never a thing until I grew older and was curious about why it was so National. 

(Spoiler: Yes the National Seashore is beautiful, but if you’re from my part of the Cape, it’s still not enough to make me want to travel past Hyannis).

All this same, what I really enjoy about growing older is the opportunity to discover familiar things with new eyes. And it’s not something that you can deliberately plan for. More often than not, it’s a case of looking out the window in traffic and suddenly seeing something that you have never seen before—even if you swear you’ve looked that way a hundred times before. Maybe it’s because you’ve grown older or maybe it’s because your interests have shifted…and maybe it’s because of both these things. 

But back to Katharine Lee Bates. Reflecting on the home where she was born, it got me to digging into her biography a bit. Beyond the famous song. The more I learned about her education and reputation as a social activity, literary scholar and even war correspondent for the New York Times, the more I realized that I have so much to dig into. I still do, and this interest has led me down a new rabbit hole that I never expected to find while home. Since I live so far away from home, I find myself logging into to our local bookshop—located a bit more than a stone’s throw away from Falmouth Green—and putting in an order for some local knowledge. It’s really funny, and often a bit disappointing, how much more compelling I find home to be once I am located far away from it.

Don’t get me wrong. Whenever I go home, I still continue to do the same silly stuff that I once did as a kid. Like going to the beach when all the sunbathers have gone home. I like to wander around the Job Lot and marvel at all of the amazing things that I didn’t realize that I needed. I still don’t find much use for most of the shops located on Main Street, but you can bet that I love popping into Papa Gino’s on Davis Straits for a slice of pizza. I might live in Italy but there is nothing that tastes like a slice of home. Also, the folks in there are always super friendly.

When I read the Falmouth poem (cited above) by Katharine Lee Bates, I kind of laughed at a few stanzas depicting Falmouth:

Never were there friendlier folk

Than in Falmouth by the sea,

Neighbor-households that invoke

Pride of sailor-pedigree.

The Papa Gino’s staff aside, I am a bit dubious about the friendlier folk comment in this poem. It’s not only because we citizens of the Commonwealth have a certain reputation that we tend to strangely embrace—it’s more that I have had the opportunity to travel around a bit. Yes indeed, folks from the northeast tend to be a bit more reserved and blunted in their interaction with strangers. It’s only once that we warm up to a person, deem them to be neither an idiot nor an asshole, that we then can be thought of as friendlier folk. But other than that, I don’t have much issue with the poem. Especially the part where she reminds us about Paul Revere’s bell.

Paul Revere’s bell! I forgot that this was in Falmouth too! Of all the times where I have driven past the green (likely coming from Coffee Obsesssion or The Howlingbird Studio) and passed the Congregational Meetinghouse, I have never stopped in to see this thing. The town ordered it from Paul Revere himself, and again as a local I have never stopped to really appreciate this fact. I know that my father has mentioned this to me before, but always because I have been a short-sighted Cape Codder with insufficient appreciation for the culture around me, I have taken exactly zero time to really understand what it is here.

I have plans to go back home again, once the seasons change and the traffic goes away. In doing so, I have big plans to work around our house and enjoy all of the little things that I used to take for granted. In doing so, I usually don’t have much bandwidth to do anything “extra”, because during these moments, I just want to exist and commit to nothing. But I feel like now, especially as I grow older, I find that there are some historical touchstones that I really need to witness at least one time. The footsteps of one of our nation’s early poets, the bell cast years later by a guy who himself was immortalized in a poem. And of course so many more things that I don’t yet realize are around me. I look forward to looking around. And learning more than I ever expected to by just turning my head.