I drove to Joan Bowman’s summer rental retreat overlooking Squibnocket after morning rain — wet, glittering in sunlight breaking through majestic clouds. I met Joan my second summer living on the Vineyard through a friend from Rockland County, N.Y. (my former home), and have looked forward to seeing her every summer.
Joan’s second book, Some Kind of Lucky, was published this summer by Vineyard Stories and she did two Island readings and book signings. I lost my own mother 10 years ago and am always inspired by Joan’s honesty, openness and energy. She turned 82 on August 19 and left for Ireland on Labor Day for a 12-day trip organized by her alma mater, Smith College. Joan “loves all the Irish writers” and we hope she is having a wonderful time.
She described one of the first houses she rented, on Quitsa, pointing, “up on that ridge, it was a really funky house, but worked somehow. Beautiful views, and then you would walk down this really steep staircase. It was like something out of a Fellini movie, sort of surreal. Then you’d walk down to the beach.” Joan said of her present house (that she has rented since 2000), as she gestured towards the front door, “People walk in that door and they lose their breath.” The view over rolling green, Stonewall Pond, and the ocean rendered me speechless with a gaping open mouth the first time I met Joan.
I asked whether Joan has ever sat on the porch at The Chilmark General Store. She laughed, “I have never sat in one of those rocking chairs; it’s funny — why haven’t I done that? Usually I go there on a mission, like oh my God we have no bread, or we need to stop at the ATM for cash.” Though her son-in-law from Pittsburgh and her daughter do the two-mile walk each way regularly when they visit, buy their New York Times, hang out, have some coffee and a morning treat before their trek home.
During her month on Island she is very seldom alone, nightly dinners at home swelling from 6 to nearly 20 at her table between entertaining friends and her extended family visiting from both coasts. Her latest book was put together in the last year versus her first book in 2010, self-published, which “took a long time to write because [I] didn’t have a publisher, didn’t have an editor, there were times when [I] got fed up and didn’t pay any attention to it.” She continues: “What inspired me and forced me to finish it was the death of my son. He read a lot of the book. I had talked to him about things in the book more than my other children. After he died, I couldn’t write, at all. As I started to heal, I realized, about a year after he died, that he would want me to finish this book.”
Her first trip with Smith was in 1997 to the Veneto region in Italy where “Palladio built many many villas for the Venetians to get away from the heat.” Two of her “Rowdy Crew” friends, what they have called themselves since their undergraduate Smith days, passed away last March. Joan continued, “This is such a sensitive time. I never thought about dying until a couple of years ago. All of a sudden there’s a shift. [Now] I think about it quite often. You just wonder — how much longer have I got, and what do I want to do?” Laughing she admits, “Which I can’t answer.”
Joan came to writing in her sixties. She went to Sarah Lawrence because she wanted to write a design column for a local newspaper. And it happened. She did it for one year and got to see her insider tips about design appear every Thursday; then freelancers were let go and her writing evolved and she realized she would not be happy writing about design the rest of her life. So she went back to Sarah Lawrence and studied with Suzanne Hoover who inspired Joan to write her family memoir and apply to their MFA program. There she wrote 80 pages, all of which are in the book.
Joan brought the Paul Taylor 2 Company to the Island this summer. None of the six dancers had ever been here before. She had four staying with her. “The company got a standing ovation at PAC after performing one of his signature pieces — Esplanade — based on pedestrian movement.” Joan’s New Jersey neighbors originally brought her to Paul Taylor performances and then asked her to join the board.
Joan is candid, she tells like it is, and she seems to have enough life behind her that she no longer wastes time. I look forward to learning about Joan’s adventures when she returns to Chilmark next July.
And as far as town happenings it is the last Lobster Roll Tuesday, 4:30 – 7:30 pm at the Chilmark Church. Don’t miss Garrett James and other musical guests at The Yard, Friday, September 5, at 8 pm — for info, call 508-645-9662. And tune in next week to learn about the last softball game of the season.
