Patricia, Do You Remember?

Patricia, do you remember July?
The lake like glass, and you and I
and all the cousins were there. Do you
remember the yellow sky, the blue air?
 
The cicada hum, the shrill loon,
the loudness at dawn, the stillness
at noon. That dusty country track,
do you remember walking back

between the white birch, the green
pine? Then the dog had seen some
fluttering thing and, what a sight!,
jumped right into that bank of

columbine. We laughed and burned
our cheeks and sang those songs and
turned our feet toward home again.
Patricia, do you remember when?

(1991)

(1976)

Welcome to Baskerville

I'm becoming a meteorologist. Like Kafka's dung beetle. One morning I looked in the mirror, there was no mistake. When you live Up Here, it's inevitable.

When you live Up Here, you're either "over the hill," which basically refers to the rest of the planet and has nothing to do with age, or "by the lake," meaning Lake Superior.

There is no other lake. Period. Lake Superior makes all other lakes look like runoff. In fact, if Lake Superior is a lake, we've gotta come up with another term for the rest of these 10,000 puddles.

It would be easier just to rename Lake Superior. There's always Gitchigami, which means "big water" in Ojibwe. Or hows about Six-Degrees-In-August Separation or The Hypothermiatic Sea or Always-Keepa-Parka-Handy.

Hows about a "Rename Lake Superior" contest. Winner gets to move to Des Moines.

But just when you're mad as hell and you're not going to take it any more, along comes One of Those Days. Not to be confused with "one of these days," which usually ends with "I'm gettin' the fuck outta here and I ain't comin' back!!"

The essential component of One of Those Days is a west wind. Here's where the meteorologist part comes in.

The first inkling that you might be in for One of Those Days occurs upon waking. Miraculously you've kicked your seventeen quilts off during the night because...here's where the miracle part comes in...you're comfortable. You're actually rather warm. You're actually rather quite warm. Which in this neck of the woods means air temperatures in excess of spit-freezing-before-it-hits-the-ground.

By the way, I'm talking June/July/August here. So we're on the same page.

Most June/July/August mornings I stagger out of bed and head straight for weatherunderground. For those not familiar with weatherunderground, it's online bootcamp for the weather-obsessed. An armchair meteorologist's training ground. In particular I'm looking for a west wind, combined with an air temperature well in excess of spit-freezing-before-it-hits-the-ground. If I find those two conditions (even at the wee hour of noon), I cancel all other activities and begin basking.

Basking on One of Those Days along the North Shore of Lake Superior trumps all other basking one might have done, might still do, might dream of doing. I'm talking ultimate basking. Quintessential basking. In part due to its rarity. Like the entire state of Texas stopping dead in its tracks from a half-inch snowfall, people Up Here go a bit wonky during basking weather. We don't know how to conduct ourselves. So we don't.

We remove the weather-stripping from our windows and actually open them. We remove our shoes. Sometimes our clothes. We wander around dumbstruck (and sometimes naked)...outside. For hours. For days. It feels like a lifetime. Like reincarnation. Like a weight has been lifted. So this is how other people live!! I must have fallen through the looking glass, and look!! here comes the sun, and it's shine-shine-shining on me!!

It doesn't take a dung beetle to know that climate change has come to the North Shore.

The good news is that us poor idiots who live Up Here are beginning to experience a phenomenon everyone else has taken for granted for millennia. Namely, Summer. With a capital S. Summer that lasts longer than a week. What a unique concept!! With each passing year, another day of basking is added to that three-page section of our calendars historically known as The-Time-of-No-Snow. And who knows? After a decade or so we might have accrued an entire month of...what was it called again? Oh yeah, Summer.

In ten years, if I'm still Here At All, I'll still be Up Here. And the first time I hear someone say "Hot enuf fer yew?", I'll know. Deep in my heart, without a doubt, I'll know. The Rapture has occurred and we've all been air-lifted to heaven. Or maybe Des Moines.

At Park Point

maggie and millie and molly and may

maggie and millie and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles; and

milly discovered a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles; and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

for whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it is always ourselves we find at the sea.


e.e. cummings

Taking Stock

My husband says the purpose of marriage is to cancel each other out.

I know what he's going to say, that I'm quoting him out of context. But was he ever in context? We were out on the back deck having cocktails between the tiki torches when he offered up this maxim.

Here's what I think about marriage. It's like that Gary Larson joke where the people go on and on talking to their dog, and all the dog hears is her name interspersed amidst a whole lot of white noise.

We only hear what we want to hear, what grabs our attention. Let me tell you, this grabbed mine. I'm still trying to figure out what my husband meant. Raise your hand if you think you know.

I'm not saying this was the reason I started cheating at Free Cell. But it was soon after the evening on the deck that I figured out how to extricate myself from a losing game without sacrificing my score, my computer none the wiser, and was well on my way to doubling my all-time record of 259 wins in a row, when I was forced to take stock.

Cheating at solitaire seems indicative of a possible personality flaw. Do you think?

Once when I was a kid I made my little sister throw a rock at me, then ran crying to our dad so he'd give her a spanking. When he found out what I'd done, he spanked me, too. I guess you could say the two acts canceled each other out.

I did the rock thing to get some attention. Being the middle of three girls is like living in parentheses. Like that Gary Larson dog, my parents only heard me when I cried.

pa-ren-the-sis - noun, plural - ses 1. A qualifying or explanatory word, phrase or clause that interrupts a syntactic construction without otherwise affecting it.

The rock thing also seems pretty much indicative of a possible personality flaw.

But back to my point. How do you know when a mere adage becomes a maxim? And is the ultimate maxim a maximum? For instance, the Golden Rule? And who thought up that one? And were they married?

I just took a break and played a few dozen games of Free Cell. I'm back on the Brownie Promise, my winning streak has come to an abrupt end. Just now I was working on a mere seventeen wins in a row when, out of the blue, my husband emails me a copy of a letter he sent to a friend twenty-five (gasp!!) years ago. In the letter he describes this woman he's fallen head-over-heels for, Yours Truly. Here's an excerpt:

"...this woman and I lived in the same house (me on the first floor, she on the third) for a year and a half without exchanging more than the most cursory of passing smalltalk on the steps or out in the yard. I might have written to you once where I mentioned a rather spooky but intriguing woman musician who lived upstairs and who I never really talked to because she always seemed in a hurry and on drugs or something..."

Ah, the good old days.

I just took another break and went for a run down by the Lake with my husband. A brief passing thundershower caught us on our way out. On our return we were treated to an enormous double rainbow stretching across the water from one shore to the other, one of those once-in-a-lifetime moments. It hovered in the heavens for maybe twenty minutes before slowly fading, like the Wicked Witch of the West.

Maybe it was a sign. Reminding us who we once were, before familiarity bred cancellation. Or maybe it was a reward for, I don't know, being good. Not cheating. One way or the other, we'd never have seen it if we hadn't been down there together, still running after twenty-five years. Which is not the same as being in a hurry.

Bounty

The newspaper lies on the blanket
unread, fading in the three o'clock sun,
but we leave it, a blur growing smaller,
to walk the shore. It's the eye of summer.

You see it first, this tiny jewel polished
by time and water, a wink of red the size
of your thumbnail. Seaglass, I tell you,
and now you're off in search of more,

filling to the brim the cup of my hand.
And I know what you're hoping, but in
all this bounty, there is only one ruby,
its row of ridges perfect like a shell.

You could live out your life on a beach,
I tell you, and not find another. We've come
so far, and bearing such treasure, turn from
the sun and follow our shadows home.