I woke up this morning shivering next to Bella. It has been in the 90's during the day but it cools off quickly in these Maine woods and I need to put a quilt back on the bed. "Mom, are we staying for the whole week?" Bella asked my still closed eyes. "Good, 'cuz Danielle's Mom says they are staying for the week too," she said snuggling in, assured that all was well in her 5-year-old world. She and her new playmate would have many more hours spent swimming to the raft and playing house between the red boat house and the big, wooden swingset.
*
No matter where in the world I have been for the rest of the year, I have spent some part of almost every summer of my life on Pocasset Lake and on Richardson's Beach doing exactly what Bella is doing. This year she is finally able to swim to the raft by herself, a milestone she and all my kids have attained over the years, like my generation before them. If you look at the lake from above, it is shaped like a big, blue teddy bear lying on its back and gazing up at the sky from the green woods that surround it. Our beach is perched on the left shoulder before the open white doors of the boat house which have watched over all of us as we learned to swim in the sweet waters and rubbed our feet in the sand.
*
This morning I emerged from the cool darkness of my back bedroom with Bella in tow and opened the sliding doors of the screened-in porch to greet the rising sun. A loon called loudly from the waters of Pickerel Pond sparkling in the sun behind the cabin. Yesterday's beach towels hung on the line, the neat procession of our new Save the Bay swim towels interrupted by Snoopy and Betty Boop. Slowly, everyone makes the transition from the cool darkness of their dreams to the skylit brightness of the cabin where the sun and the loons and I with my coffee are ready to greet them.
*
It is another morning in Maine and soon we will all don our bathing suits and sunscreen for another day spent on our beach. We who have grown up with the taste of this water on our tongues will watch over our children as they learn its flavor. We will line up our chairs on the beach and stare out beyond the raft anchored to our shore by its yellow buoys to the opposite shoreline whose profile of trees and hills we have memorized unknowingly in our brains. It satisfies us because it is familiar. We will talk of our lives spent mostly away from this place we all love so viscerally until our voices trail off and the lure of the lake draws us back to the present. We will all realize that we are here and we are hot and even the older folks will eventually end up in the lake once more. We will run our fingers through its liquidity and catch glimpses of the fish who are drawn to the brightness of the shallow waters but quickly dart away to darker depths, frightened by our motion. We will float, surrounded by its willingness to hold us, and gaze up at the sky like so many misplaced buttons on our teddy bear's shoulder.
*
The lake will know us and the loons will sing our names until our ashes are scattered and our cry becomes a distant echo.
*
K3
*
No matter where in the world I have been for the rest of the year, I have spent some part of almost every summer of my life on Pocasset Lake and on Richardson's Beach doing exactly what Bella is doing. This year she is finally able to swim to the raft by herself, a milestone she and all my kids have attained over the years, like my generation before them. If you look at the lake from above, it is shaped like a big, blue teddy bear lying on its back and gazing up at the sky from the green woods that surround it. Our beach is perched on the left shoulder before the open white doors of the boat house which have watched over all of us as we learned to swim in the sweet waters and rubbed our feet in the sand.
*
This morning I emerged from the cool darkness of my back bedroom with Bella in tow and opened the sliding doors of the screened-in porch to greet the rising sun. A loon called loudly from the waters of Pickerel Pond sparkling in the sun behind the cabin. Yesterday's beach towels hung on the line, the neat procession of our new Save the Bay swim towels interrupted by Snoopy and Betty Boop. Slowly, everyone makes the transition from the cool darkness of their dreams to the skylit brightness of the cabin where the sun and the loons and I with my coffee are ready to greet them.
*
It is another morning in Maine and soon we will all don our bathing suits and sunscreen for another day spent on our beach. We who have grown up with the taste of this water on our tongues will watch over our children as they learn its flavor. We will line up our chairs on the beach and stare out beyond the raft anchored to our shore by its yellow buoys to the opposite shoreline whose profile of trees and hills we have memorized unknowingly in our brains. It satisfies us because it is familiar. We will talk of our lives spent mostly away from this place we all love so viscerally until our voices trail off and the lure of the lake draws us back to the present. We will all realize that we are here and we are hot and even the older folks will eventually end up in the lake once more. We will run our fingers through its liquidity and catch glimpses of the fish who are drawn to the brightness of the shallow waters but quickly dart away to darker depths, frightened by our motion. We will float, surrounded by its willingness to hold us, and gaze up at the sky like so many misplaced buttons on our teddy bear's shoulder.
*
The lake will know us and the loons will sing our names until our ashes are scattered and our cry becomes a distant echo.
*
K3
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