You never know where you’ll find a community.
Robert ambled into our lives about a year ago, more or less. David and I were accepting bids for someone to come and straighten the dock out at the lake house. The first couple of bids were in — good bids — when Robert came to the front door. He startles you when you first meet him: 6 foot 4 and built with a good solid chest, he reminded me of a bear. But a shy bear, a quiet bear. David and he bonded immediately and Robert left with the job in hand.
New Hampshire never moves quickly when it comes to permits and shorelines. Every step of the project involved committee meetings, promises, checking of regulations. It struck me odd coming from a state whose motto is “LIve free or die.” Such a radical motto, such total commitment. I love it. But the end result of the turtle-like pace was that we got to know Robert well over this past year. He’s a techy like David, but stuck here in the frozen north where people are still suspicious of cell phones based on the scarcity of cell towers. When David was in town, Robert would make sure to come over and have a good old tech talk with him, and — oh! — by the way, let’s look at the dock. We learned a lot about Robert’s life during those talks, found a lot of common ground, too.
Robert is one of those misunderstood people. Perhaps because people are intimidated by his size, they rarely sit long enough to find out how incredibly intelligent Robert is. And yet, because he works with most of the homes on the lake sooner or later, Robert seems to know everyone. He lives on an island himself — Welcome Island — where his is the only house and it is accessible only by boat. You’d think this would be a drawback in the community-building factor, but it isn’t. He hops in his boat and heads out for the day. During the winters, and other inconvenient times, he manages to find some place to live here on the mainland. Yesterday we passed Welcome Island and saw Robert giving a tour of it to some TV producers. We could never tell if he was just touring them for the fun of it (people do that), or if they were scouting a location. Either way, Welcome Island looked busy. Later in the day Robert swung by the house (on land, this time) to drop of printed copies of our daughter’s boat licences, since we are printerless. I discovered Robert — all 6 foot 4 of him — stretched out on our kitchen floor trying to woo 7 lb. Toby into being friendly. Fruitless task, but priceless picture.
Why am I blogging about Robert today? I don’t know, except that I’m pretty sure no one else has thought about blogging about Robert. I thought about him last night, and realized what a gem he is in this community. I suddenly just wanted to recognize that, even though I have no intentions of sending a URL for Coffee Shop Journal to Robert! And as David and I set out to be intentional in our communities, to be a part of the “Tangible Kingdom,” Robert comes to mind. I wouldn’t have met him in church, don’t even know yet if he goes to church, but I wouldn’t have missed his friendship for anything.
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So what were the TV producers doing there – scouting or just looking… – don’t leave us hanging?
I don’t know! They were bargaining with Robert to rent a barge, and then decided to look at the island. He thought they might want to film there, but wasn’t sure! They were from one of the CSI’s.