We are on Campobello Island
on a Wednesday.
Grandma, Mom, Granddaughter,
three fiercely independent beings
who managed a multi-hour car trip
over the border,
leaving the Easternmost point
of the United States
to trek into the Canadian beyond.
The earth opens and unfurls
into craggy, rocky shorelines.
Greener pines, i've never seen.
Endless blue skies soar overhead
with faint puffs of white clouds.
We order three bowls
of famous Roosevelt fish chowder
which we lap up
on the painted white porch of Prince Cafe
while watching the ferry
cross a pick-up over to Deer Island.
We are here to see
the generational Roosevelt Cottage
where one of our most famous presidents grew up,
raised his own family each summer
and left his hat and cigar and paper.
The park is our world's only example
of a co-run by two countries, per our tour guide:
"in peace and effective partnership.
"And that's all I'll say."
We take an intermission in the parking lot
at 2:50 p.m. Atlantic Time
to peer indirectly at the sky
using the shadows of shifting leaves on my car bonnet
to catch glimpses of forty-four percent totality,
2026's biggest solar eclipse.
We are the only gawkers.
We do not care
that the handful of visitors
out on the international park lawn
take in our little trio as if we are the spectacle,
and not our moon crossing in front of our sun,
plunging us into a strange shadow, darker, bluer,
which to be fair is almost imperceptible
if not attuned to what to look for.
We peer into the primary bedroom
where Franklin Delano Roosevelt
took his final steps at age thirty-nine,
three and a half years younger than me,
my kid cheerfully points out.
We learn that the wallpaper
is a faithful reprint to replace the original,
"Because generations of smoking...doesn't do wonders to wall print."
We gaze out of broad bay windows
providing clean sight lines to the beach and beyond.
We spy a four-foot-tall parchment megaphone;
the same one Eleanor used to call
the children on the water in for dinner at night.
As I take in the library, the Victrola,
the pie stand in the kitchen,
the teddy bear in the nursery,
it dawns on me, this is the cottage of a happy family.
Unlike the mausoleum chill of the Breakers in Newport,
this Roosevelt red and green shingled cottage
is full of life, decades removed from its last occupants.
Walking the halls, craning my neck
into bedrooms and larders and school rooms,
the home fills me with calm, cheer, peace.
I note with relief that the primary bedroom
is not substantially bigger
than the staff quarters,
on the same floor; same perfect views.
I feel welcomed and embraced by hospitality.
as the breeze flows through
bringing oxygenated sea air to my lungs,
I can feel in my veins why Campobello
was such a magical place for the Roosevelts —
and why it must have been such a tragedy
for FDR to only return three times after contracting Polio
("from the Boy Scouts," our guide surmised)
due to there being no phone lines to the island
during his highly plugged-in presidential years.
We begrudgingly exit,
but before we turn Southbound,
we make a stop at the most
jigsaw puzzle-looking lighthouse
I've ever seen.
It's closed due to the rising tide;
we've just missed our window
to descend rusty ladders into the depths
to then cross the channel by foot
and scale another orange-brown ladder
on the other side
to tour the lighthouse itself.
I am secretly grateful that
the decision To Cross or Not to Cross
has been made for me.
My mother, however,
regrets being denied this adventure.
After some candid snaps,
it's time to climb back into the car,
trudge South to the border,
show our papers,
give our stories,
make our way further down down
down the coast into Yarmouth.
