Summer's Breeze

This morning I woke up and had a good start to my day. There was just a small glimmer of sunshine coming in the window and I could see the leaves at the tops of the trees swaying in the breeze. I smiled to myself as I was reminded of how I'd redecorated this bedroom of mine a year or so ago, in the heat of July. It was a project that had been on my summer to-do list. How beautiful and serene it is. I took in a deep breath and seeing my husband awake, I launched in to tell him of the dream I'd just had.

I have the most vivid dreams. They are usually very strange, comical even, but often tinged in worry. This dream had layers of thoughts and worries mixed within. I recognized that as did Eric. My husband and I laughed at the silliness of the dream, one involving a box of used toothbrushes being packaged up and presented as a gift..okay?!, and then I looked into Eric's beautiful blue eyes and I let the tears fall. I am so grateful for him. As cliche as it may sound, he's my rock. He smiled at me then held me close, knowing that tears are what help me de-stress.

We talked about a variety of things, but at one point he reminded me not to put such high expectations on my summer. He is right. I found myself trying so hard to keep the plates spinning this year, to keep everyone happy and safe, to do "the right thing" no matter what the situation. I did this as I tried to deal with my own grief for not only my furry Charlie and all she represented, but for another loved one who is still very much in my life, but who is not the same person as before. All the while, my work continued, my bills and housekeeping needed attention, my waistline reminded me I was not eating right nor was I exercising. But through it all, I kept thinking, "I'll just wait until summer. I'll fix this in the summer. I just need to get to SUMMER!" The only problem with having said all that is that I placed too much expectation, too much pressure on my poor little short summer.

So, starting today I am telling myself each morning to "lighten up" with all that worrying. Tomorrow I am going to the ocean with whoever wants or is able to come with me, but I am leaving the house early and I am getting back whenever. I love the ocean. Today I am going to see where the breeze takes me. As my husband left for his summer job this morning he yelled upstairs to me, "Have a good day. Remember to do whatever it is YOU want to do today, okay?!"

I will. And tonight I am going to crawl into the sheets of my bed and cuddle up to that sweet husband of mine to give him a kiss, a kiss that only a woman who is living in the moment can give.

Skeleton Tales

With another 9 entries like this one I will have written and published 200 blog posts in 200 days. It’s remarkable to me that I have been guided to write so many. Some days the writing comes easy. Other days it is a struggle to find a subject of inspiration. I turn to pictures, quotes, music, books, and of course memories to seek out a day’s topic when I am stumped. Other times, I know immediately where I’ll go. I am drawn to a subject by a day’s events, my feelings, or in following my heart and letting it tell me what to write. Every once in awhile however, there is a subject that I long to write about but which I fear exploring. I can overcome that fear at times but yes, there have been discussions I leave untouched.

I once suggested to my husband that I am complicated. I have to admit, I was rather taken aback when he started laughing at me. He told me that no, rather I am “an open book”. I was a little bummed. I tried to defend my suggestion by telling him that one of my teachers in high school had said long ago, “Miss Anne, you are an enigma”. Okay, now despite the fact that I had said, “Thank you” to that teacher, only to run to the nearest dictionary to look up what the word meant, I was flattered upon learning that he found me mysterious and puzzling. I also suppose I found the idea of being complicated as being something sexy or sophisticated. So when Eric laughed at me, I thought, “Well, there goes my sex appeal”.

Whether or not I’m an open book, there are a few skeletons in my closet, a few stories that I’ve told only to my husband or my children. I admit, I AM pretty much an open book; that is how I naturally live my life; I probably say too much too often; but like many others, I do have a few secrets. They are kept hidden out of fear of hurting another; it’s not myself that I am afraid of hurting. I value honesty but I do not believe that anyone should bare their soul if in doing so, another person is negatively affected. The secrets I have are pieces of my past which, for better or worse, shaped me into the person I am today. Everyone has their share of hardships and yes, I had a few troubling experiences that I have long carried in my heart. But I learned a long time ago that no one gets through this life unscathed. Wanting to make sense of them, I believe that the hardships I went through gave me a perspective that has helped me be more compassionate in my relationships with other people. So, in examining those skeletons, I have learned to accept the room they take in my closet.

Sometimes I find myself thinking that I’ll incorporate them into my fiction writing in some way, but when I try to put the stories into text, I feel my fingers freeze. I can talk to Eric or even to my kids, but I can’t seem to “make it real” by recording certain stories on paper (or laptop). I do not know if I will ever write about the secrets I harbor. I laugh to myself thinking that someday when I am old and gray, I’ll gather a few people around and say, “Okay, I’ve always wanted to talk about a few things. Here I go!”

So maybe, if you stick around and continue reading my blog, in another 43 years (only 15,695 more blog posts), you’ll read my skeleton tales. In the meantime, I hope I can continue to secure your attention with my day-to-day inquiries, insights, and imaginings... with or without any sex appeal I may or may not possess.

Any Questions?

The other day I saw my old Sunday school teacher, Mr. M. I see him quite regularly whenever I return to my hometown and each time I am reminded of being my son's age when I was in his CCD class. The wonderful thing about the man is that each time we would come to our weekly class he'd say, "I'll answer whatever questions you may have". And each time he made that offer, I had a new question for him. As he'd promised, he'd answer me (and others who had questions) as openly as he could.

I remember once asking him, "Do dogs go to Heaven when they die?" He responded with a sensitive discussion but one which I completely tuned out because the bottom line of his answer was that animals do not have souls and thus cannot go to Heaven. I remember giving his words a lot of thought but ultimately coming to the conclusion that he is WRONG. To this day I believe that Heaven would not be Heaven for me and countless others unless dogs (and other animals) are there too. And that's that.

Another time I told him about how I'd seen this television movie which put a man in a horrifying situation of being forced to select one of his fellow captives to die. If he did not select one person, the bad guys would kill multiple people. I knew that to participate in a murder is a sin and yet I was puzzled by what the man's options were. That was the day that my Sunday school teacher talked to me about the "lesser of two evils". It is a conversation that has actually helped me in several situations over the past 30 years, although thankfully, none have been as extreme as in that television movie.

Each time I see my Sunday school teacher I smile. I completely respect the man for being so forthright with us children and for inviting us to ask him questions about our faith, church, morality. He wholeheartedly embraced our curiosity and inquisitiveness and did his best to be there for us. It is a practice that I adopt when teaching and in raising my own three children. Although I have to admit that repeatedly being asked questions by a nosy busybody with an agenda is obnoxious, with most people's inquiries I have never been intimidated, however difficult, complicated, or sensitive. I may not always have all the answers but I do my best to respond to questions as honestly as I can. And when I do not know an answer, I invite my children or my teenage students to find other resources where we can discover the answer or explore possible responses at the very least. Simply put, I open the door for any and all questions and I do my best to help find answers, because sometimes, it just helps to be allowed to ask questions, to get them out of their heads and into the open.

I still have questions. Many are about the past or the future, questions that, truthfully, are probably best left alone. Today is all we have, after all. Still, sometimes I think to myself, "If only I could sit down with Mr. M today and get his take on this".

Camp Visits

I am feeling a little overwhelmed tonight. It was an eventful Fourth of July weekend. Between sharing a camp with my brother and his family then seeing my parents, two brothers, two sister-in-laws, a daughter's boyfriend and almost every niece, nephew, grand-niece, and grand-nephew I have, plus seeing my high school classmates at our 25th reunion, not to mention coming home after a long drive, picking up our new puppy from her first weekend away and helping my kids organize plans with friends for sleepovers as they celebrate our town's fireworks displays, I am exhausted tonight. It was a full weekend but I am completely unsure as to where my focus is tonight.

When I get overwhelmed with anything in my life I have a tendency to pull myself away, to find that quiet spot where I can think. It's not always easy to do however, especially when a camp or a house is full of activity. Tonight for example, there are children in the family room, two teenage girls in the living room, another teen in her bedroom, and my husband has already headed upstairs for the respite of our master bedroom where he's enjoying Conan O'Brien on the tv in our room. The puppy has sacked out near our bed for the time being too. So, since the deck is wet with this afternoon's rains and the bugs are too bad for me to pull up a chair in my backyard, I've stolen away to my son's unoccupied bedroom to be able to hear my own thoughts...and to write.

My Mom and Dad, like me, enjoy seeing their family very much, and yet each of them can become overwhelmed as well. We like to tease Dad of his tendency to "go pick blueberries" when the children get too noisy at camp, whether or not the blueberries are ready for picking, and I, of course, turn to the dock, unless it too is loaded with others. When that's the case I take a walk or do my best to sink into a chair and escape with a good book. I love family but I'm not good with large crowds for too long. As I left camp today, however, it was quiet. My children and I had opted to skip the parade in favor of packing up to head back home in time to hit our community's fireworks. Just as we were leaving camp however, I paused to open a notebook titled "Camp Visits".

I thought I was opening a makeshift guest book that my Dad had us all sign in the past two years whenever we'd visit camp. It had replaced a fancier guest book that I'd bought years ago and had placed in my bunkhouse at camp. Dad had been telling me that the guest book no longer had free pages for everyone to record their visits and that he needed a new one, but I hadn't been able to find one to my particular liking so he'd given up and had bought an ordinary notebook so everyone could continue signing in, documenting their stay at the camp. But although there was one notebook that indeed had these various signatures inside, another notebook had familiar penmanship inside, my Mom's.

Here I was, about two minutes away from leaving camp for the weekend, when I saw pages and pages of my Mom's penmanship. I read several pages and found tears streaming down my face. Although I know that for years she has written on calendars and scraps of paper, since last year she had been writing inside this notebook, detailing she and Dad's trips up to camp, recording the weather, the duck families that went by out front, the activity across the cove, visitors, lunches, and other such happenings. I read an entry she wrote after my family had returned home last August. She wrote with pride of how my older daughter would be going to college early to attend dance team practices and how my younger daughter was overjoyed with plans to redecorate her bedroom in her sister's absence. Her words touched me. But her last entry, written about a week ago was my favorite. She wrote, "Very heavy clouds with Mt Katahdin half under the clouds. Lake very calm with no one on the lake from here anyway. Peaceful & quiet--who could ask for more".

Camp is beautiful--full of fun with little ones, exciting with family and friends who stop on by. The annual Fourth of July at the family camp comes with its share of activity! It's important to nurture the bonds between cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents and grandchildren and the only way that can be done is through the time and the talks that develop when we share the same space. I love that my Mom is helping to record everyone's visits and the day to day activity of camp life. But yes, you're right, Mom. When the lake is calm and camp is peaceful and quiet...who could ask for more?

Pollywogs and Peanut Butter Crackers

As I told my son, who is entering Middle School in the fall, one of the best things about leaving elementary school is making friends from other schools in the district. I well remember entering the 6th grade. It was when I met several good friends. It was the year I met one of my best friends, a girl named Ann Marie. I cannot recall exactly where we first met, but I do know that we both played the flute in the band and we went to the same church. We had several mutual friends. We probably shared the same classes too. We became better friends when we hit high school, between sleepovers and trips to our camps. We had close friendships with others too, but we could always count on one another over the years.

When we went off to college, we realized that our chosen schools were only 20 minutes apart. We took advantage of this and enjoyed a few rock concerts together, and along with a few other friends, “Ree” and I rented an apartment together the summer after our freshman year and worked at the mall. She served as one of my bridesmaids in 1988 and I sang at her wedding a few years later. Over the years, despite the distance between us, we’ve managed to stay in touch and to visit one another’s families from time to time. Each time we’re together it is like no time has passed. Even our children quickly jump back into familiar and comfortable friendships.

So as our 25th high school class reunion approached, I was happy to hear Ree would be in town. We met at my camp to walk next door for the traditional “family day”. Her sons, so incredibly handsome and sociable, immediately began talking to me as though we see each other every day, and before long, our children were once again enjoying one another’s company. We went to meet our other classmates and enjoyed some time with them, then headed back to my camp to give our kids a chance to hang out together at the lake. A search for the pollywogs began as Ree and I sat on the dock swatting horseflies, watching our children catch thirty tadpoles. Trips up the ladder to the camp loft, peanut butter crackers, and time on the hammock all added to what would make a pretty nice afternoon for us all.

At one point during our time together today, I paused for a second and thought of how quickly the three decades had passed since we first became friends. How much life we’ve experienced in those years, and how very lucky we are to have this chance to watch our healthy and happy children playing together! What a good mom Ree is, how beautiful a person she has always been, inside and out, and how incredibly blessed I am to still have her in my life! Tomorrow night we’ll meet up again to attend the dinner-dance with our high school classmates. She and I are looking forward to seeing everyone, but I have a sneaky suspicion that our own families’ reunion this afternoon, time spent with pollywogs and peanut butter crackers, will be my favorite part of this entire weekend here in our hometown.

Back on the Dock

Long before Jane Fonda and Kate Hepburn’s characters in the film On Golden Pond made the idea famous, I had long said hello (and later, goodbye) to the lake each summer. When I was little, as soon as we drove into our camp’s driveway, I’d run down to the beach in front before even taking a single step inside. Now that I’m an adult, I take time to politely visit with whichever family members might be inside the camp at the time, but I never fail to get outside as quickly as possible to walk to the dock, to dip my toes into the lake as I whisper, “I’m back”.

I found the dock empty soon after my arrival at camp late afternoon, so I walked down the deck steps onto the beach and made my way over to it. Sitting in the sun, watching the waves on this breezy day, my lungs filled themselves with the mountain air. Heaven on Earth this place is to me. So powerful a spot that even in late December, when I began this blog, I easily decided upon its name, “Views From the Dock”.

It’s where a loon appears right in front of me before it dives under water. It’s where the bright blue sky kisses the mountain in front of me. It’s where the sun glistens over the cove as it begins to set. The dock can be the center of activity where children run over me to dive into the lake one moment, or the respite I turn to when I need its quiet. It’s where I dream of being on the harshest of cold winter days or when I ask myself, “What do you want?”, when life itself seems harsh. I always want the dock. That’s all.

My toes touched the water of my favorite lake today. The beautiful mountain, in all her glory, had waited for me to return. Back on the dock, I took in the view.

With French Onions on Top

Marriage brings its share of challenges, that’s for sure. Some you can anticipate. There will be conflicts over money and chores, or the clashing of different expectations concerning whose family traditions will continue. For example, my husband’s family always had a Siamese cat whereas my family always had a black cat. We also always only had ONE cat as opposed to the two or three that his family would own at one time. I swear I may have been open to the idea of having a Siamese cat if it had not been for the evil ones depicted by Disney. You know the ones, “We are Siamese if you please...we are Siamese if you don’t please”?! Eric and I luckily have melded most of our traditions together over the years and we began our own original traditions too. But yes, we own one black cat.

But there are also the challenges in marriage that you can never anticipate. Who knew, for example, that lugging a new treadmill up a flight of stairs in our house together would cause such discord between us? Or that the day we tried to hang shelves together on the wall of our newly painted study would be one of the worst days in our marriage? I wish I were kidding. We have learned over the years that as compatible as we are, there are some things we simply cannot do together. I get too competitive perhaps, or we both tend to be know-it-alls, I don’t know. We’ve come to accept those times when we realize one of us needs to walk away from a project or at the very least, call for a time out.

There are moments when we stretch ourselves however, and we find ourselves trying out one anothers' favored things. For example, I’ve learned to love sleeping with two pillows, following his lead. More times than not, I find myself enjoying the television shows he starts watching, despite my initial hesitation. I also treasure Eric’s idea back in 1992, the year our first child was born, to begin our tradition of buying a new Christmas village piece each year and setting it up together each December. And he’s come to accept and simply chuckle at my weird quirks such as my need to have only a digital clock that emits blue light because red lights seem evil and my need to sleep with the fan in the window on summer nights when he’d rather fall asleep to the music of the crickets or peepers. (I like those sounds too but for some reason, the hum of the fan gives me the best sleep).

I still need to get better at remembering to make his favorite tuna noodle casserole with french onions sprinkled on top (just like his Mom used to make) and he would do us good by not taking it personally when I sometimes grip the door handle of the passenger’s side of the car when he’s driving, but after twenty-two and a half years of marriage, it is a pretty good darn good sign that we can laugh together as we look at that treadmill (now down two flights of stairs in the basement...thanks Joel for moving that for us) and the shelves in the study (one we successfully and calmly hung back up after it came crashing down just the other day). With continued patience and loving acceptance, we just might make it another twenty-two and a half years!