(more photos here, but i've screwed up the sizing and am out of time. Crystal Beach)
--The routine is the same, wake, coffee, journal. Walk to the bluff with coffee, assess the day. Take cups back to cottage, put on swim suits. Walk for an hour or so, to the state park or thereabouts, depending on the crowds, the number of dogs on the beach, whether the flies are biting or the sand stinging. Relish knees working again, the way they should. Spend the morning either visiting, or reading on the beach, or playing in the water, with kayaks, sailboat, skim boards, sand. Talk to people.
Afternoon, realize too much sun and the dog is tired and tends to get grouchy. Return to the cottage for lunch, then read, sleep or go to town for whatever.
Wake, go to the bluff for sunset.
--From AWAD- oneiromancy (o-NY-ruh-man-see) noun: The practice of predicting the future by interpreting dreams.
And this:
Remember, we all stumble, every one of us. That's why it's a comfort to go
hand in hand. -Emily Kimbrough, author and broadcaster (1899-1989)
--Dream notes:
-Paralyzed. Watching as the needle is inserted into the spine and fate sealed. Though mind is fine, no way to communicate. Watching as the man takes first your spouse, then you child and tortures, rapes in front of you. Who is the man?
-Walking along the beach and finding the body. From the cigarette boat races, when one flipped. "I can't go home without my son," his mother said.
-Camping. (why so many things in my dreams that I just don't do?) Coming so close to kiss …but being told no… no. you are married. Knowing yet being consumed with a need to touch, be touched. The kiss so tender, so clean, that my mouth waters to remember it. Lovemaking so powerful and intense … the full moon effect?
--I woke on the couch with a start to the phone ringing, only I thought it was a cell phone and answered mine, my son's and his best friends, only to put together that it was the land line when I picked it up and it stopped, no one there.
I fashioned all sorts of possibilities in my head. It was my husband, who'd stepped out to buy toilet paper or something else that would look odd in the small town blotter, arrested for speeding or reckless driving or something and using his one prison call to call me on the land line, cell phones somehow prohibited in jail.
But it was my friend, to whom I'd sent email that morning.
--Later, in the single digit morning, I went to bed. The air had cooled so much that the fans created cold wind, and I burrowed beneath quilts. What a luxury, fresh air and quilts in July. I fell asleep immediately, the northwoods night like a drug, the sleep REM filled and colorful.
--More dream notes:
--And then I was going down an escalator in a mall someplace, and fell. The falling startled me. I was fully awake and disoriented. I imagined I heard the phone ringing again, and stayed there in bed trying to decipher its jingling ring from the sounds of the night birds and the neighbors, whose cabin had been singing loud country western tunes through the open back window for hours before I went to bed. I am sure now that all that phone ringing had to do with traveling without three of the four children. They grow up. They stay behind. But just as I still hear cries in the dark when they are hurting, I still hear the phone ring to tell me they are home safe and fine. And they are. Mother's ears, I guess, we just don't outgrow them.
I didn't get up. Eventually I went back to sleep. The bed was hard, too hard for my softness. No matter which way I turned, the circulation seemed constrained where I laid upon my own flesh. I thought about dying in my sleep, and wondered if that is how it happens, the strangulation of oneself on mattresses too hard to give. Or so soft one cannot breath. Like Sids, only for adults. Sudden Adult Death syndrome. SAD? Yes, I believe people die from being sad. Especially in their sleep.
The next thing I knew, Scout was nuzzling my hand. Full daylight had broken and she was ready to trek on the beach for hours, ready to make friends with anyone, her tennis ball ready.
--Again the morning was perfect, 72 degrees. I've spent too many hours driving to escape bitter cold in the winter in the north, stifling heat in the summer in the south just to get to 72 degrees. The only thing I worried about were the bugs that had started to take over the beach. They blew in across the lake with that cool wind from the corn fields of Illinois, droves of yellow cucumber beetles. They don't really do anything other than land on us and crawl. They don't bite. Still the sight of them, the thickness of them is disturbing.
I went outside with Scout, and returned a smile to the scowling neighber who watched her. She pointed to the posted, typewritten list of rules. "Keep dogs on leash" is number 12 on the list. Only there have been dogs here longer than I've been here, and I've been here for seventeen years. Whoever posted the rules has neither the right nor power to restrict access to anyone, including dogs. I know my dog too, and know she'd never defile the beach. She goes into the woods like any civilized creature. The dogs are not the problem. Are they ever, really?
---The shadows are long this morning already, I've lain (is that really a word?) in bed too long again, but it was probably 3 before I fell asleep. That is six hours, not too much I think. It was so late because we had a disagreement about sex. (scene deleted)
So that stands between us this morning,
--Thunder is making its way closer, rumbling on the slight breeze that barely ripples the surface of the lake. The air is heavy and damp with anticipation, the night pregnant with the storm that promises cooler weather.
There is nothing quite like a storm coming across the lake. Lightning cracks the vista like the sunset, highlighting the striation of the clouds and sizzling into the water the way the sinking sun does. We can watch it from where the lake curves on the horizon, and can tell within minutes when it will hit the shoreline. The speed with which the storm approaches warns us if we will lose power. Not this time for us, but they do in town.
We leave the decking that leads down the bluff to the beach when our wine classes are empty, and when we are tired of swatting away the flies and mosquitoes. Scout left at dusk with the boys; none of them have patience for friendly chatter. Tonight it is the neighbors who bought the cottage of our closest friends out here…Bill and Molly. Odd that our best friends were in their seventies. Bill taught us to sail when our children were still small enough to all fit comfortably in the sunfish sized boat, and sold us his Hobie cheap when he moved to Florida full time. I miss them. I miss the boat. It stayed on the beach one beautiful fall clear into October. We didn't want to bring it up and put it away… just one more sail. Then the storms came, and it was gone.
--more dream notes:
--In the next dream I was throwing a party for people from my husband's office at my mother's tiny house. Distributed very fancy invitations, vellum paper inserts and tied with satin ribbon… 5-8:30, dinner. Then had to clean the house… my mother was a lot of things but never much of a housekeeper. As if anyone with seven children, a full time job, widowed at 45 ever could be. I pull the party together, everything from plates to bathroom towels; I am good at this. Her bathroom was the same as when she died, handicap equipped, in fact, everything seemed the same as when she died but her. She was two-legged and sober and helpful, even taking me to the factory where she'd worked to get plates from the Employee Club closet. We didn't end up doing that because she clearly thought it was wrong and really, what did plates matter to me? In the end, the plates were the plastic ones with seashells that I'd bought for my daughter's graduation. Nothing fit together in the dream.
--Cool cloudy morning, gentle waves on the lake and the whole neighborhood seems to be sleeping in. I've done some research this morning on the Resort Era in South Haven. Famous Jewish resorts. Some of them world renowned: the Catskills of the Midwest, they said, from 1910 to about 1960. Only a few still standing, most destroyed by fire or the greed of people wanting to own a piece of the lake. Am I any different?
The resorts were torn down, mostly in the sixties, condos, private homes and in one case a parking lot replaced them. At least now I understand the city flocking to the north beach…the north side of the River. It is where all the resorts were, across a drawbridge; there is no bluff to speak of there. Our side has the lighthouse. We also have trees and the state park, and the bluff and no crowds, most of the time, but we are a few miles out of town so the comparison isn’t really fair.
--The boys are interesting this year. They aren't eating as much as boys their age and size should eat, and they are staying up til one a.m. every night. Strawberry pop tarts, blueberry pancakes (the blueberries are amazing this year) and taco pizza sustain them. The term 'beach brothers" comes to mind. I am very fond of the boy my son has chosen as his friend… he is middle child sweet and so easy to get along with. His favorite phrase: "You’re funny."
--The air has finally changed back to typical Michigan air… the morning was in the sixties and everyone complained that there weren't enough covers on the beds. Over our heads is the question of whether we leave today, controlled inmterestingly enough, by the girls even though they aren't bere. If my closing is Friday, then we must leave today. If not, we can take one more day. It feels like we are stealing time. We take it.
We build a bonfire on the beach, roast hot dogs that somehow ended up without sand (unheard of!) and watched the beginnings of the meteor shower. We note how we've seen the stars from so many angles this year, it seems like different skies. Four shooting stars should be good luck, shouldn't they?
After 20 hours of driving, more stops for fast food than I can in good conscious count, and listening to all 17 discs of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince on cd, we are once again at our permanent address.
When we arrived, the back door was standing wide open. One of the cats was in the front yard. The trash container was lying on its side in the street, it's lid in the neighbors yard. After determining that no one had broken in, we ventured inside.
Stacks of mail were strewn all over the kitchen. In the family room, cables for x box and computers and tivo webbed their way through furniture. Paper cups and sandwich wrappers decorated every flat surface. An air pump, from the garage was lying on the rug a friend sent from Turkey years ago, and a gold toned soccer ball, fully inflated, was nearby. A chocolate cake from the grocery story, 80% gone, sat near the stove. The TV was on, 19 messages lit the voicemail box. My bathroom was littered with the paraphernalia of a teenager. The drawer… yes, THAT drawer, in my vanity, was ajar.
You see, my son stayed home to "house sit."
He was at work when we got home.
It's a good thing.
My younger son ventured upstairs, but came back down right away. "Something happened in Jon's room."
"What do you mean?"
"Everything is like… messed up… and there's a blanket over the window."
My son later explained that he "decided" a few days ago to "take over your bathroom."
And that since he was not going to bed until 5 am any night, that even the sun that filtered through the wooden venetian blinds bothered him sleeping. To his normal "wake up hour" of 2 . PM.
When I left, there was fruit, cheese, milk, and meals he could warm up in the refrigerator. When I returned, not only was that still "there"… but also left over sushi, pizza, chicken wings, pasta….etc.
Did I mention he leaves for college in two weeks?
-Quote from my best girlfriend D: "I was the one that found that man. He was still making noise, but everything was crumpled, arms, leg, neck. It was so apparent that he was dead, even with the noise. I was the first responder. It was a long fall. But a short jump."
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