On the Water

The first day at the cottage, it rained a little, and the lake was grey and pockmarked with raindrops. We swam anyway, the water cool and refreshing against the humidity of the day, and then sat on the rocks listening to the water rippling - a different kind of peace from the breaking waters of the ocean that I enjoyed a week earlier.

In the afternoon we raced off the rock and cannonballed into the deep clear pool of water below.

And in the evening, we watched the loons sail across, and were lulled to sleep by their cry echoing across the lake.

The next day we swam at first light and it was cold and clear. We dried on a rock under the morning sun, and then Erik and I went out in the canoe, slicing through the water away and then back to shore. The two of us went back out at sunset, farther this time, around the islands and back. Then we joined the girls diving into the sunlit depths, the surface warm, and the lake cool beneath.

It became an early morning habit for Erik and I to slip away in the morning sun that lit up the lake like a pathway. Sometimes the girls came with us, sometimes with Grandma in the paddle boat. Sometimes Grandma took the kayak out beside us and we explored the lake and the islands. At dusk one night, we all went out in the canoe, the laughter and voices of the children rising over the rhythmic sound of paddles in water. We pulled the paddles in and hushed as we got closer to the loons.

In that moment there was a lull, a peace, a sigh. As if the universe was breathing out slowly.

The Cottage

Lichen and moss, and granite and pine
Water lapping and sun,
And really, really wet dogs.

Hemmed in, protected by rock and stone
We walk down dappled paths across a
Sunlit carpet of pine needles to the lake
Pristine and calm
Down steps carved out of the Canadian Shield.

Kids cannonball off the rock which juts into the lake,
A shallow bay on one side and a gentle slope to shore
And deep clear water and a clean drop on the other
Cool before the morning sun's heat
Warms up the water and reflects it back, golden.

The smell of sunscreen, wet hair in tangles - getting blonder in the sun
Coffee outside, the steam rising in morning's chill
Browned faces, hungry stomachs
A splash, a shout, a shared laugh
Damp towels slung over shoulders, dancing barefooted over pebbles
Wet swimsuits and life jackets hung
Over railings to dry.

Week Away

The kids and I just returned from a week's vacation at the cottage. Hemmed in by the rocks and trees and lakes of the Canadian Shield, we had no cell service, no computer, no contact with the outside world unless we chose to drive into nearby Sharbot Lake.

It was bliss!

For 8 days we canoed, swam, ate, fished, explored, read books, kayaked, played games, had campfires, and then did it all over again.

Lots to tell, lots to show.

Wind Broken Stones

Where the earth shows its bones of wind broken stones

and the sea and the sky are one

I'm caught out of time, my blood sings with wine
and I'm running naked in the sun


There's God in the trees and I'm weak in the knees

and the sky is a painful blue...

Stan Rogers, 45 Years

Why even try to describe how the ocean makes me feel when Stan's already captured it perfectly...?

Girls' Reunion

These ladies are the main reason I went to the Maritimes last week. (The dog is just an extra....couldn't leave itzy bitzy Mitzi out!)

I've seen Julie in Montreal, and visited Leanne last time the kids and I were in New Brunswick three years ago, but I haven't seen Shari in about 9 years, and the four of us haven't really had a chance to hang out without husbands and children since the early days of university.

~

This year seemed like a good one to remedy that. I said it was a joint birthday celebration (hence the bracelets) - but some of us (won't say who, Julie) are a little sensitive about our age and don't do birthdays, so we just "got together."

And shopped for books. And ate cheesecake. And drank wine. And ate dinner. And talked. Until 2am.

~

And I coveted Julie's naked fairy that sits on top of her piano.

Brilliant evening. We should do it again sometime!

Marrying the Sea

I took a book of poetry with me on the plane to the Maritimes last week. It’s called Marrying the Sea by Canadian poet Janice Kulyk Keefer and Melissa lent it me because of the namesake poem of romantic love she thought I would especially like.

I did. But it wasn’t that particular poem that moved me most. It was another. A poem about tumultuous passion, tormented yearning and devastating heartbreak. I read Isle of Demons on the plane and got stuck, reading and re-reading it, the words like a whip cracked across my heart.

Almost the first thing I did when I saw my friend Leanne for the first time in years was thrust the book at her. You have got to read this poem, I told her. And she did, getting lost in the 16 or so pages it took to follow the plight of the young French noblewoman whom legend tells was abandoned on an island, with the lieutenant she met on the way to New France, when it was discovered that they were lovers.

At supper the young lieutenant
speaks of snowfields vaster
than this sea we cross – each tree
a cathedral. Even the birds,
he tells me,
sing in a foreign tongue

I doubt I’d have been able to withstand the double seduction of such language and the ocean together, and though she offers up prayers amid her tumult

…Seal my ears
With your white silence

they are no match, in the end, for the calms you cannot guard against.

I could taste the salt on my own tongue long before I landed in Saint John.

Brine enough in the wind. Brine enough for me in the poem.

The Virtuous Blister

Returning from a wonderful four day vacation in New Brunswick catching up with a bunch of friends, I met up with my cousin and her friend from England at the airport in Montreal, and we got home to the farmhouse around 9 pm at night where, after tucking the kids in four times to make up for the nights I missed, we sat and chatted. And not being one to suffer in silence, I regaled the company with the story of the blister I got on my toe from walking along a sandy beach barefoot.

Andrew peered at me over the rim of the glass of scotch he was sipping. (And the violin began playing softly in the background.)

Don’t expect sympathy from me, he said. You got your blister walking along a beach on vacation while I was here with the children working.

I have a blister too, he continued. My blister came from getting hay down my boot while I was piling it in the barn. After I mowed it, raked it, baled it, tossed it, by myself.

My blister, he told us, is a virtuous blister. Unlike your lollygagging, beach walking, vacationing blister, mine came about from hard work….

...and as anyone who knows Andrew well can guess, he was off on one of his amusing rants that leave his listeners in puddles of tears.

I hate it when he makes me laugh like that! It's not very ladylike to snort wine through your nose.