The day we leave for a week at the lake could best be described as ‘hasty.” Hosting family means rising from our bed early to [first] let chickens out, clean both coops, check on and ultimately scrape chick poo, change water, food, return clean shavings to the brooder where our long legged, rather dinosaur-esque chicks race away from my protruding head trying to use the makeshift wood scraper The dogs and I walk the sheep down to the pasture where they will stay for the week.
The washing machine pulses the constant back-beat to our packing. I pause from tossing random numbers of balled socks into my suitcase long enough to break eggs into the cast iron pan and push down toast for everyone.
Out of the corner of my eye I see Paul strong-arming our Chimnea into the back of our truck, our son Michael standing in the bed helping. An orange cooler sits at the ready for cold foods from the fridge: a recent gift of a trio of Jasper Hill cheeses, a must-take. I check my list and drag our ice cream maker out from the corner giving it a quick wipe down before anyone sees the dust. Three dozen eggs stacked on the table near the door, Too Fewe Farm labels hastily stuck on.
We eat catch-can, I pull out warm peaches to be cut up and accompany eggs and toast while asking, begging, Paul to remind me to bring our date book. An order for a wool blanket from the farm complicates progress but we grab a box from the garage under one arm while hauling eight foam floaties in the other. Cardinal rule of farm store- if you vacation- they will buy.
I fold towels warm from the dryer as if it were an Olympic event (which it should be), stuffing them into the bathroom shelves. I make note of the swimming towels stacked, waiting, and promptly forget them. We use, and wash, bath towels for swimming all week.
Finally we arrive at the turn to the lake. Paul and I in separate cars; me in the truck with two dogs and the bed full of necessary accouterments, him in the small car stuffed, like green olives, with everyone’s groceries. How will we eat this much food? We’re able to answer that question in less than three days.
I’m not good with transition. Even when we are packing for a trip that I so badly want to take, I think about how nice it would be to simply stay home, light an evening fire and go to bed too late. However, what I am good at is going anyway.
My mother’s recent death makes me wear overwhelmedness like a smell. It feels like there is too much to remember. I carry small, crumpled scrap papers with reminders in all pockets. The timing of everything seems wrong and I question myself at each turn. But I was right: what I am good at is going anyway.
Once the hauling, unloading, refrigerating, and bed-making is finished I walk out and stand on the hill overlooking the water. At the far end of the pond stand conifers looking as if they were painted in a multi-green haze. No other buildings in sight- I always forget how it good it feels to look out over nothing but nature. The water is calm, two loons pop up in the center, moments later their impossibly small, fuzzy baby sidles up next to them.
I take my first full breath in a week.
We have one rule on family vacations; everyone does what uniquely defines vacation for them. Paul and I wake at our regular hour to sunshine and robins and we roll right over again: determined to break pattern, to stay, tangled in cotton sheets, simply because we can.
I pack light is as I believe you need only two outfits for a good vacation on water; bathing suits, (two is good, no laundering) and pajamas, if you wear them. This works for me unless we have a week of rain in which case you’ll recognize me in the restaurant in my bathing suit and pajama bottoms.
Making the bed is the only household chore I engage in. We team-cook, everyone taking two meals and when I’m not cooking-,I’m not cooking. I read and drink wine. Sometimes our sons feel a bit off balance without mom’s “helping hands” but manage to get over it, with some help from their bathing-suited, wine-drinking, pajama-bottomed, waving-from-the-chair, mom.
Everyone is on their own for breakfast and lunch. I sit at the picnic table in the morning sunshine with yogurt, strawberries and granola and normally make egg salad to scoop onto crackers for lunch.
Paul and I drag Adirondack chairs into the shade stacking our books (and reading glasses) next to them. When we aren’t in the water, canoeing or swimming, we are reading. The only thing missing is a tiny “Do Not Disturb” sign- but it is implied.
Evening dinners are applauded by all from the picnic table benches. We applaud the perch fish-fry the same way we applaud the burgers hot off the grill. Dessert tends to be roasted marshmallows on whittled sticks (yes, I forgot the metal ones) and homemade ice cream: this year’s flavor being coffee heath-bar crunch. After dinner (no dishes unless you are the cooks) we might take another dip and/or play a round of Yahtzee or charades. The dogs have crawled under the tables and are soundly sleeping, dreaming of chasing the green Frisbee soaring out into the water.
Day three or four is when I get my vacation-legs. I seem to have forgotten how to practice music and do laundry, We have been blessed by a week of beautiful weather; hot, sunny days and an evening punctuated by booming thunder storms. My brain focuses and my breathing slows. Everyone falls into his or her own easy rhythm. I forget to make lists of things to remember and spend hours paddling the canoe searching for painted turtles basking atop warm rocks.
There had been so much organizing and preparation; for family arriving, for my mother leaving, that it felt impossible to vacation, to rest. And yet here I am, in my perpetually wet bathing suit, barefoot, my pile of books on the arm of my wood chair, glasses perched at the tip of my nose watching the baby loon learn to take its first dives.
It seems I was sent what I had forgotten to ask for, but needed most. Peace.