Finally! Translating inspiration into a Painting

Again, this won't be a long entry. Well. For me, it's not that long. Oh, who am I kidding? It's long.

Writer's Block Is Painter's Block
I have been blocked at the painting table this last week.  I have been dreaming paintings for weeks, but the moment I sat down to paint after the week of storm chaos, nothing.

I sat with my taped down paper, all my beautiful brushes, my tissue papers, everything out for me to use and... nothing.

The demon voices from childhood clamored instead, in their original forms and in the "grown up" permutations.

"You? An artist? Your sister was the artist, not you."  This voice is the counterpart to the "You? A writer? Daddy wrote the book. You haven't published a goddamned word, except for that Stanford stuff. Advertising, really. Just schlock."

Clever voices, those. You all know enough of my family to be able to figure out how those got there. And here is one of my favorites, interchangeable for singing, song-writing, regular writing AND painting. I call her Mom's 'Demon for All Seasons.'

"You just like the sound of it. I am an Artist. A Writer. I am apart from the rest of you somehow. Who do you think you are? You're not such a much, any more than anyone else. Do something real with your life. Something practical. If you won't be a teacher, get into banking, or something that will pay the bills. An artist. Save that for the weekends."

That one is the age old WASP voice of New England. Modesty is THE virtue above all virtues, followed closely by practicality.

And there is the one that goes, "You know you'll screw it up. You haven't really screwed something up in a while, so this one is going to fail. Really. Why even bother?" And I sit there, with a loaded brush, poised, terrified to put it onto the paper.

Yes. Terrified. And what will happen anyway if I "screw it up?" Yes. The earth WILL swallow me whole and spit me out as unfit. Even the earth will find me objectionable. Yup. And the painting will be so awful it will confirm the other demon voices and I will never paint anything someone will want; I will never paint another painting I like; I will run out of money because I never paint another painting that is anything; I will have a shopping cart and sleep in a cardboard box and wind up having to use a  surf board with wheels to get around.

And I get so engrossed with that bizarre image that the paint dries on the brush and I start laughing and give up for the day.

That was a game Jessie and I used to play when she got into  her own "I'm a loser because I cannot write this paper perfectly" mode. We'd play, "What's the worst that can happen?"

And Jessie and I would build this elaborately ridiculous story of how her life would be over, she'd lose her friends, all of her family would reject her and--Jessie liked this--we would spit at her when she entered the room, and she would become homeless and die. This usually got her writing just so she could "Get it over with and be homeless and done with it all." (And she rarely got lower than a B+, much to her brother's disgust.)

Only with me, I would simply start laughing and then remember Jess and tear up and then walk away.

We also have the "Your ideas suck and who the HELL wants to read your drivel or see your torn paper scribbles?"

Any of these voices sound familiarly inane? And toxic?

Okay, so I do know that you simply have to keep showing up at the blank paper, no matter what. I have done that with my writing--whether it's with the work I do offline or my blog. I have looked at the blinking cursor for so long that I've written songs to its beat. Bad songs, but songs, nonetheless. In my head, where I cannot possibly see them as productive work. God forbid I should actually admit to myself that writing songs, good or bad, is showing up at the page! After all, my intent was to work on that poem I thought of when I was cleaning the kitchen, NOT some song that no one will ever sing because it is so pathetic.

Finally, we get to "You are almost sixty. Who on this EARTH will care what a sixty year old, overweight woman who walks like the Hunchback of Notre Dame has to say or paint? Where on earth do you get OFF even trying at this late stage? You are no one." Yeah. That one is my favorite.

Light through the Wall of Voices
Only finally, I hear Julia Cameron talking to me. I was lucky enough to do a workshop with her several years back. I see her and hear her voice.  "If you wait to start, then you'll be even older than you are now, so why not start?" Sometimes she words it differently, but always the point is the same. So you feel you are too old to start now, so you are going to wait even longer to do what you love? And is the only reason you do this to make money? NO. I have no idea whether I can make a dime more. And I'll certainly have no idea if I do not produce anything.

I write because it is the only way I can process my life EVER. I started my first journal when I was twelve. It wasn't a diary. It was a journal, and it's where I first wrote that poem about the old man and his shack, with the eagle. Since that time, I filled more than forty journals. I tend not to have journals per se any more. I have random musings in a folder on my desk top, and a beautiful handmade "journal" by my bed for snippets when I awaken in the morning. But writing was a habit I developed long ago. And when I peek into a really old journal I see drawings, too...

When I get to the voices I've acquired through the years that are NOT demons, I feel the change inside. I feel something fomenting. First it is anger and all those pathetic tapes that run no matter how hard I try to silence them. And I start telling each one off. You may laugh at me in this, but it is the only way I know how to ditch them. They will never shut up permanently--they are ingrained. However, I have learned how to get them to shut up long enough for me to find my groove again.  And once I start, I am very glad I live alone, because I do it aloud.

I scream at them. "Jean Ellen would be HAPPY that I am painting! And Dad would LOVE it that I wrote for Stanford. How DARE you tell me that was schlock. It was good work. It was wonderful work and IT WAS WRITING MY BEST! I can be an artist if I want to be!"

Oh, yes. God forbid I do anything quietly or rationally. Did I ever mention that when I went off to college, I thought I would be an actress? Big surprise there, right? I address them all. That happened Friday morning. I was just plain ANGRY.

The Transformation begins
And Friday night I lugged a formless, nameless painting --the one I began on my retreat -- upstairs. I did not work on the one I thought I would begin. I worked on one where all I knew is that it kind of looks like choppy water. I said aloud, "PLAY with it, for God's sake. Don't worry about what it is, what it may be, just play with it. Screw the voices. To hell with anything but the process. JUST PLAY." I stomped my foot, which, of course, hurt, but when you are six, you don't care whether or not it hurts. If you are mad, you're mad. Stomping is what you do, at least, if you are six-year-old Jetty.

So I played. And then it began to look like the Lake on a choppy day, the way it did when I'd gaze, unfocused, down from the picture window in the cottage, the one by the giant field stone fireplace my grandpa built--on the daybed, tucked there under the window, with the enormous wood box at its head, the old record player in its beautiful wood encasing at the foot. The room always smelled like pine. Sometimes I would open the wood box top and just smell. I'd climb onto the wood box, crouching, and leap from the box onto the daybed, making sure my feet never touched the floor so that the alligator under the bed could not get me; a cheetah pouncing. Then I'd lie on my stomach and slither up to the window, lean on my elbows that rested on the sill, push my nose against the glass and stare. I was a hissing cobra, and my elbows and head were the hood. But finally I would simply lose myself, seeing nothing but the water, dancing. White caps and sparkles and every shade of blue. Sometimes a maple leaf would drift in my line of sight, and I would blink.

And Grandpa would bring me back home with his laugh, having witnessed my transmutations.

And so I began painting nothing but water. I collaged long lengths of tissue with the flat side down, curves and bumps on top, in every shade of blue I could make.

When I was done for the evening, I stood my lake against the oak desk that was at the cottage, too. The one Grandpa did his paper work at,  by the one light, in the evenings. If I peeked in after bedtime, opening the swinging door from the bedroom hall, I would see him bent over papers.

"Jet. Aren't you supposed to be in bed?" I would see an eyebrow raise and I would giggle and run to my room again.

I played last night, too. And again, for just a little while this morning--long enough to get that darker blue just so, there, toward the top, to balance something or other that I cannot name.

But now I have to shower and get ready to go tutor my nephew. He is working on an essay about the difference between Lao Tzu and Confucius. And then he needs help understanding Mendel's Principles and how to make and use a Punnett Square. And he wants to get the jump on mitosis...

My brain will hurt by the time I get home on Monday, so I will leave my playground upstairs for now, so that I can use it and recover.

But here's my point. I am working on a painting for real again! And I like it. And maybe no one else in the world will like it, too, when I am done, but it does not matter. And that's the point, isn't it? Today I will be doing something that matters for and WITH my nephew. We manage to have fun in the misery of it all! I love science, which is why I loved my work for Stanford. All of it is real.

Life's a gamble most of the time, isn't it? Every day it is a 30-70 shot whether or not my legs will work. The odds are in my favor, but as the day progresses, the odds shift drastically. Yet I get up. I show up and I make them work. I'm not so sure that my painting and my writing are so very different. I have a friend who asked me why I bother trying so hard to keep walking, since I cannot do the things that are FUN--hiking, going to art shows and museums, taking a trip to New York and things like that.

I walk because I can. I walk because I can still take care of myself as long as I keep on walking. I'll do other things for fun and take the trips inside my head. And I don't know what I might miss if I STOPPED walking just because it's hard.

What will I miss if I stop writing just because I don't know whether or not other people will want to read what I write, let alone pay money for it? And what will I miss if I stop painting? I remembered my grandpa again. He lived for me as I painted. I had not thought of those days in a long, long time. I can smell the cottage again. All from playing with my papers and paint. What will I be missing if I do not try to paint the autumn leaf that will drift into my view, there, over the blues of that water? What will I remember when I paint a few sparkles there, among the white caps?

I don't know. It isn't worth the risk, the not trying. Isn't that why we do what we do? Isn't that why we search for the picture to snap? The painting to create? The story to tell? Is that why the Stanford professors just had to start another business when the first, second, and third didn't quite work? Are they afraid they will miss something important if they do not take the risk?

Somewhere or other, with people who are driven to create, to explore, the risks of missing something outweigh safety. I don't think that would necessarily be the right thing for every person to do, but perhaps it is what drives some of us. I don't get a rush from the risk itself; I get the rush from the process and then something indescribable when it works. I don't like the uncertainty, actually. I hate it; but I need to do it anyway. It has little to do with courage, though. I simply love to fly.

Not an original thought among any I wrote today, but they are the thoughts that get in my way, and the thoughts that take me home ... and the thoughts that allow me to fly.

What about you? what are your demons and what thoughts are the sails that catch the wind for you?

Oops. I had best at least get my shower taken! Have a wonderful couple of days? (well. More than that, but it will be tomorrow night before I get back.) Editing will not do for today, and I hope that I read about your demons and what you do to shut them the hell up.

Showered, dressed, and studying my Mendel. I had to turn my painting to the wall, so that I am not distracted. Bye for now.

More Lush than Rotting: Huckleberina Finn et al.

 Maybe I should have broken this into two entries... it's a novella. Oh, well! I hope you enjoy...

Summers in Utopia... as Ever, the Lake
Our memories never seem to move in nice, predictable paths. Our minds wander, like willful children determined to explore the forbidden territory beyond the next block. We will cross the street, open the drawer, even go into the woods alone. You’d think it would change once we become “grown ups,” but it doesn’t. We knock down the locked doors, sometimes seemingly against our own will.

I see the endless, island beach days -- white bright and singing throughout my childhood. And yet I see the inside of my father’s closet, smell his cologne. I feel the floor and ceiling nearly meeting at the back, where it narrows, floor reaching up, ceiling bending low. I am small enough to fit in the one safe spot, curled into a ball, silent, waiting.

I hear my brother's cries. I hear him call, “Jetty, run and hide!”

No one can find me here because I’m the smallest; but, like a bull, Jim has been distracted by the nearest moving object, Jack. I stare into the safe and fragrant dark, even now.

But then I blink, and I see the white pine boughs kissing The Lake. The water laughing with sparkles in wind-driven sunlight. I first learned the word “diaphanous” there. Until Mommy told me that word, I had none to describe what I saw.  So white-bright, it could blot out the darkness of "regular" life at home.  There were no dark corners in my summers; my soul danced bare, shining, and safe.

Who gets to spend summers in Utopia? I did. And it shines as brightly through fifty-eight summers, today.

Even Jimmy lost the darkness, had others to distract him.  Or perhaps, even he rediscovered innocence there, from time to time. I know that Jim never went to the Lake; only Jimmy.

***
When I was newly five, one July, I was really busy when Mom wanted to go home for our lunch break. It probably was only about 11:30 or so, but Mommy really didn't like the noonday sun. She'd take us home and, unless I stayed with Judy the way I normally did, I wouldn't get back to the beach until after 2:00. And this particular day, Jude was visiting relatives at some beach by the sea  somewhere.

I was building a sandcastle at the time and Jim and two of his girlfriends were helping me.  They were really helping,  not teasing--Jimmy never played with me and I liked it. Jack had been with other kids and wanted to go home, but I did not.

"Mom, I'll bring her home by 1:00, okay? Let her finish the castle."

Mom left her watch with him and we finished our castle. It was BEAUTIFUL, with two moats and a driftwood drawbridge. Jimmy and the others built a breakwater so the 1:00 Mount Washington cruise ship run would not ruin it with its waves. We left at 12:35 because he even accounted for my five-year-old legs vs his ten-year-old ones. I was missing a flip-flop.  Jimmy weighed late vs a lost shoe, and decided late was worse.

I was upset, but he said, "Oh, forget about that. Ma won't mind. You can't remember everything at five anyway."

We got to the top of the beach entrance and Jimmy stopped cold. They'd paved the road while we were playing. The new tar was steaming in the heat, and he looked at my tiny foot. At home, he would have relished watching me have to put my bare foot on the hot pavement, smiled at the pain, and then would have stopped just short of letting my feet blister.

Lake Jimmy? He simply said, "Well. I guess I better carry you, huh. I can't let that little foot burn."

I said, "I can walk. I'm big." But he laughed and grabbed me up onto his shoulders as if I were a twig. About halfway home, though, there was a grassy island for the stop sign at the bottom of the last hill, and he put me down. He was nervous because it was 1:00, and we were still ten minutes from home. I couldn't tell time, but I knew that the little hand was on the one and knew just enough.

My brother's face was bright red. "I'll hop on one foot for a while, Jimmy."

And I did. And I'd hop to a grassy yard, then walk a bit, and  hop. But after four yards, he stopped me, smiled, and simply picked me up and had me hook my legs around his waist, then jogged with me on his back.

Mom was waiting for us. Apparently, they had paved AFTER she got home. She'd driven up and over the island, so she had not seen the pavers go past. She took a look at my foot, at my brother, and she said, "Jetty, WHERE IS YOUR FLIP FLOP?"

She was kind of angry at me. But Jimmy put me down and rested his hand on my hair. "Ma, we're hungry. Come on, it's just a flip flop. She's little."

Mommy kissed him, shook her head at me, and we went in to lunch.

But that's how he was in the summer. Lake Jimmy. I loved summers and I loved him that day.

Utopia. I spent summers in Utopia.

***

 

Oh, the endless adventures, the magic of islands that turned to dragons and swept me to lands unknown. I watched fairies come to life. The giant Daddy Whales emerged beneath us, vaulting Judy and me into the sky, like baby dolphins. No, none of the rotting of our lives touched us at the Lake. I had Judy, and we all had communal parents, and tumbled about the Island like bear and wolf cubs.

There were family cookouts where all the station-wagoned families pooled food, love and nonsense. Evening games of Michigan Rummy in which my mom cleaned up. She would bid, staring with china doll, wide-open eyes around the table. Mrs. Claus with a dealer's visor and a mind like a computer. She’d stutter, feign innocence.  And clean up.

Jacky and I never could understand how everyone could be that dumb about her. She was smarter than anyone there, except maybe her best friend Phi. (Fee) Phi spoke seven languages and was a world-famous anthropologist. She stood fully six feet, an Amazon. Classic features and a Jane Russell body. Hair in a French twist. Every man on the beach just stared, slack mouthed when Phi went for a swim. She and my mother played intellectual leap frog with the Sunday Times crossword, seeing who would complete it in pen first.

The birthplace for myths, if one chose to conceive. Rich. The freedom. That’s the thing. I was absolutely free there. Judy and I would meet by 9:00 and be together until supper time. Sometimes we’d see each other after supper, too. Taking turns running the half mile between  our summer homes.

I never had to hide in the dark.

But the mind goes to the darkness anyway. I would dream images of dead mice in traps, feel a shove at the top of the stairs while safely tucked in bed, feel the blood on my legs, but will them away with the images of sun on water. The Lake taught me the art of forgetting. We learn to put it away, sometimes for years, these particular punctuation marks of pain, of terror too ugly to fix our gaze, too harsh for little hearts meant for fairyland and mythical battles where good always wins. My world had Medusa in the corners, and I learned the art of blindness. I learned the beauty of the sidelong glance, the ability to look away just before the monster appeared. Look away to the mountain that always steadied my gaze.

I ran to my spot by the bridge every morning before breakfast, starting when I was just seven, after first grade. I could walk down from the road, and sit on a rock, just hidden from view, and I would look off toward the Sandwich Mountains. They never changed; they  never mocked my fears, nor laughed at my dreams of greatness. My mountain never left me alone. I would watch until the sun was high enough to make the fairies come, then I knew I had to go home.

Usually that was about 7:30. And by my third or fourth day there, the monsters did not bother even trying to come back. And summer began for real.  I found the time and the room and the freedom to lock my closets and stuff the drawers full of whatever  I could not bear. It was very hard work, but I was tenacious. I filled my days with adventures with my pirate/Merry Band/vagabond friends. 

Maleness is not a prerequisite for a Mark Twain sort of summer.

It was the Season of Exile. The Reign of Terror of the Gang of Four: Judy, Marge, Geri and I were kicked out of, well, everywhere, pretty much. Pickle, Lily, Dinah, and... yes... I was Sewer. Those of you who know my last name, know it's a play on that. Judy and I felt we were kind of done in on that part, but, since we WERE the ring leaders, perhaps it was only fair.

Deep Sea Diving: Poisoning Our Parents

Pickle had lately discovered stuffed clams and had the idea that we could stuff mussels. We had also been mocking the t.v. show "Treasure Hunt" in which Lloyd Bridges deep sea dived every week and wrestled giant octopii, squids, terrorists, thieves, and sharks... and seemed to almost always narrowly escape a life-threatening case of something called "the bends." The best we could figure when we were littler was that they called it that because everyone was always bent over in agony and then they died. And it involved coming up for air too fast; you couldn't beat your air bubbles.

Lily required some assurance from our parents that diving off the raft for fresh water clams would not put us in mortal danger. Pickle and I were best at the diving anyway, having been tried by our fathers in the art of holding our breath and letting it out slowly.

We  probably collected fifty.   In the process, we found a couple of sunken ships and probably a billion dollars worth of doubloons. All in a day's work. I had just turned twelve, and Judy was due to turn. I was not keen on being a teenager ever, and was terrified of seventh grade, a new school and the great unknown. Fortunately, we four felt pretty much the same, except for Geri (Dinah). She was born boy-crazy, but she liked our games, too. That summer, especially.

Once we had the mussels, though, we realized that they needed cleaning, grinding and preparation. Pickle's Aunt Phi was a gourmet cook, so Pickle lifted one of her cookbooks for us to use, and absconded with the necessary spices. This was good, since we were headed for our kitchen. Grandma's cottage was the smallest place, but had the biggest kitchen. Her spices included salt, pepper, and... salt and pepper. Dad never met a seasoning he was comfortable with and Grandpa'd been no different.

We headed through the garage, slamming into the house with our six buckets of mussels and Grandma met us at the side door, barracading us from setting FOOT in the house until we'd cleaned the nasty things in the lake. That took us three hours. She was NOT easily satisfied; Dinah and Lily left before the job was done, with orders for us to call when the cooking began. Pickle and Sewer? My grandmother was not about to let us off.

Then we had to boil and open and gut and season and cook… we finished our works of art at 8 that night.  Phi and Pickle's  and Dinah's mothers were brave enough to try one and were violently ill for hours. On top of that, my grandmother’s kitchen was dripping in mussel juice. We spent the next morning scrubbing and were informed that her kitchen was off-limits, period. For life.


Hey, There, Little Red Riding Hood...
Another friend, Julie, was a year older. SHE got to take the enormous teak INBOARD boat out in the evening.  We'd tear through dinner, Pickle, Dinah, and I, and head for their place. Lily wasn't allowed, usually.  There is nothing like the sound of those old inboard motor boats. A comforting, low, gurgling sound. They rode low, smooth, and fast. Julie would take us flying out toward the Broads, the widest part of the lake. It was several miles, unobstructed by any of the Lakes couple of hundred islands. And usually, she'd cut the engine and we'd drift.


That night, we decided we would sing, or something approximating that. We lost track of the drifting, until we heard a little thunk, and the boat kissed THE WITCHES. The Witch Rocks, in July, barely broke the surface in the Broads. A nest of rocks there in the widest, deepest part of the Lake, they covered a surface of a a few hundred square yards, and were very clearly marked. But there we were, and Julie panicked.


Pickle and I grabbed the oars, and Dinah held a big old floodlight of a flashlight so we could push our way out of the mess. No harm done, but Julie still did not want to go home yet, so we anchored about halfway between her place and one of the islands straight across.


We sang, "OH. Sweet Pea. Wontcha dance with me. Wontcha, wontcha wontcha dance with Me-e-e-e." We were screaming byth etime we reached "Wontcha be my girl."  Unfortunately, we then  decided to follow with "She Loves You" and, finally, "Little Red Riding Hood."  When we howled, to our horror, we saw lights go on on Governor's Island AND the other Island and, through the last of the daylight, heard versions of

"SHUT THE HELL UP!"
"Knock it OFF!"

"STOP!"
"I'm GONNA THROW UP!"

Then a voice that sounded like a familiar bass... "HOME! NOW!"


It was my dad.  He was at Jude's house, which was not all that close to Julie's, we thought. Funny. When trouble hit, our names returned. We were cooked, parboiled, fried, and most definitely banned from Julie's boat. So was she. We were not allowed on a power boat ride through whole two weekends!


Betty Crocker, Redux...

So we moved on to blueberry muffins.  We snuck up to old Mr. D’s hill at about 6:00 a.m. about four days later, and began picking blueberries.  I mean, his property must have gone up a quarter mile to the house, and it was nothing but blueberries.  We picked really fast, and I don't think we laughed more than about four or five times at the retelling of my father's puns.  Mr. D. came barreling out at about 8 yelling at us and we took off.   He called us each by our name and told us that he would loose the dogs on us if we ever even walked BY his house again. Right.

I said to Pickle, "Yeah, like there's a law against walking? Like he could ever eat even a tenth of those berries or--"
I shut up because I heard barking then and we RAN all the way to the top of the beach road, where we quickly ducked into the bushes, just in case, and checked our stash.

Even after spilling about a quarter of them, when we combined our take, we realized we had enough berries to feed all our families! And I mean, after all, even we couldn't poison anyone with muffins.

Now Lily was one of eleven kids (no lie), I was one of four, and Pickle's family had Dinah's family AND Phi.  We’re talking serious numbers of muffins, but since all of our homes were entertainment centers, there were serious numbers of muffin tins as well. Lily’s house had two ovens, so that was our natural destination. We each robbed our respective cottages of all the muffin tins and set to work. Scratch muffins, so we had to cadge flour and eggs from each home, too.  We figured we'd be done before anyone noticed anything was done. How we thought that a couple dozen eggs, eight cups of milk and five pounds of flour, give or take would not be missed eludes me now. We were normally considered intelligent...

Furthermore, we didn’t ask. We took.  We were invincible.

We marched down the road with our haul, chanting, "Pickle. Lily. DinaaaahhhhSEWER!"

Lily's Mom had gone out with the three littlest kids to the library and store. She'd be gone forever. The older ones were working. And really, who cared about the two boys who were left? They went off on their bikes with candy bar bribes in their pockets. We would surprise everyone and all our sins would be forgiven.
 

Muffins. We wanted them to be generous sized, so we filled the cups accordingly. We couldn’t find liners, so we greased the cups. Have you ever greased twelve dozen muffin cups?  The last fifty or so don’t get as much.  When we carved out the centers of the muffins, about eighty were really very nearly presentable.  It took us two and a half hours to clean the tins, though. And there was a matter of batter drippings between stove and counter. Lily's dad was not pleased... And it turns out we used up the milk and, Jude's mom had planned on using the eggs for an angel food cake and...

After all of us were over our three-day grounding for taking stuff, we decided we’d had enough of domesticity.  

We're Bloody Buccaneers.. UGH. 
And Each a Murderous Crook... UGH.  (Adventure on the High Seas)
 It was time to explore the frontiers beyond the island, sail off to the distant shore. Or row.

Row to Timber Island, to be precise. How far could it be? And there were four of us. We’d just go on a calm morning. Leave a note that we’d be home after lunch. Hadn’t we all been taught to tip a boat and tread water for half an hour?  Pickle and I brought the food this time.  Veri-Thin® Pretzel sticks, white seedless grapes, eight cans of soda, half a package of Oreos® and some Viking® Doughnuts. (Those were the days of the Viking® Bakery delivery truck and the milkman, going to the laundromat, and grocery day and such. TV at the cottages was superfluous.)  Life was good.

A perfectly flat lake at 6:45, a large aluminum rowboat and we were gone.

It’s about a mile to Mark or Timber Island.  It didn’t feel too bad then, but the lake was flat and we took turns, rowing in pairs. (though Pickle and I seemed always to be part of the pair)  But Dinah was company and it was Lily's boat. Seemed fair, and Pickle and I had our rhythm in all things anyway. We sang the Pirate song from the Musical Peter Pan. It helped us keep time with the strokes. Especially the "yo ho's."

When we got to the cove, the romance began to die. There was nowhere to land and the island seemed a mass of dense undergrowth and granite. Huckleberry and blueberry bushes, sumac. Rocks. We rowed halfway around the island and found a small, bug infested beach.

“What are we, sissies?” Pickle growled.

Inside, I said, 'Uh, yeah. I hate bugs.'

But I got out. Pickle and Lily forged ahead and stepped into a ground wasps nest. They each got stung only about twice, but that was enough for some pretty mean pain, so we ran for the boat. The wasps were slow, thank God. We were not.  Pickle and Lily then looped their legs over the boat to soak their bitten ankles and calves as we rowed away. I spotted another cove and this one seemed better. There was a breeze, so there weren’t the bugs, and there were huge flat rocks to stand on. The boat kathunked against one, but it was metal. No cause for alarm. We pulled the boat onto one of the rocks by the shore and waded in. We made mudpacks for the stings and we had our lunch, splashed around, sang loud obnoxious songs…

It was curiously dark before we’d finished the pretzels or the cookies.

“Damn! Thunderstorm!” Jude looked at me. Suddenly, we were just ourselves again.

We did not care to remember her father’s words or my grandfather’s. The words you live by in the summer at The Lake among the mountains. When the lake is flat until eight, there will be trouble in the afternoon. There were whitecaps and the water was molten lead.

We threw the food in the bottom of the boat, in a tangle with our sneakers and shoved off. About 100 strokes out from the island we felt the water at our feet. There was a leak.

“You bail, I’ll row!” Judy yelled.

“No, Jude, move over and we’ll both row while they bail,” I said. We rowed and rowed, getting nowhere of significance.

Then Geri screamed.  “OH MY GOD! WORMS!”

All over the bottom of the boat, were puffy, horrible white worms wriggling. About three inches long. Everywhere. It was a total infestation. All we could think was somehow or other, they'd got on while we were beached. It was disgusting, but there was nothing for it.

“Shut up and keep bailing!”

The waves got bigger, the sky got darker and we went absolutely nowhere after less than half a mile. Then the thunder came.

We were four idiots in a leaky metal rowboat in the middle of a lake with a thunderstorm bearing down and a boat full of worms.

Then we saw it. A police cruiser.  To our absolute mortification and total relief, we were rescued.

Summarily ordered on board, the two officers could do nothing but shake their heads in disgust. When Judy said her name, they knew where she lived and we were quickly deposited on Judy’s dock, leaky boat in tow.

Ted was there, waiting for his daughter, for us all, his 6’4” enormous frame clearly visible from a quarter of a mile away. I snuck a look at the police and they were smiling, rather sinisterly, I thought.

One said, "We've come to deposit your girls here. We couldn't find an arrestable offense called terminal stupidity, so here you go, Ted. Good luck with them." (Ted knew everyone. I mean everyone. And anyone he didn't know, Mommy knew. We were toast.)

We tried to explain, which was pathetic, really. All that came out was, “Adventure … we were explorers … we know how to swim … boat leaked and stung by wasps and didn’t see the storm worms everywhere.”

“Worms?” Ted asked. It was the only comment he felt warranted attention. The rest was meaningless static. “What do you mean worms everywhere?”

Eager to distract him from the inevitable lecture and further grounding, we led him to the boat. He looked at the boat, then back to us, then back to the boat.  He bent over and picked something up, then turned around.

“Worms,” he said, as he held up a now empty box of pretzel sticks.

***

We pretty much went back to playing tennis and swimming to the raft after that for summer excitement. After another week's grounding. I mean, we could play on the beach for an hour in the morning, then we had to go to our own homes, and got sprung maybe another hour in the afternoon. I got really good at Canasta and read To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time. This was when I decided to grow  up to be a southern writer, and my mom informed me that this was not likely to happen, considering I was a Yankee.

Great. It had only been a year and a half since she'd told me I could never be a linebacker for the New York Giants.


I moped around for at least a day, until I discovered Lad, a Dog and, my favorite, Wolf. And Grandma's books from childhood. Judy said she started reading all the books on the shelf beside her mother's chair. When we each wound up telling our parents that we didn't know why people hated grounding, I think they gave up on us entirely.


***
What I hold onto is how bright the summer was.  That summer before teenagehood, I had already put all the horrors of rape and torture in a locked vault, covered with Utopian New Hampshire days.  It was the last summer of holding onto childhood, but the first summer I latched onto a brand new dream of becoming a Writer. Judy and I felt destiny called. No. DESTINY called. There were no lower case moments that summer.

I think we each created our own adventures there, creating our own versions of Heaven and haven, even Jimmy.  He found his own freedom, too, perhaps, when he was there. I never knew what his prison was.  I only knew my own.

And at the Lake, I broke free and flew.

Still There

I went to Governor's Island at "the Lake" in New Hampshire. And if you've ever been there, you know what "the Lake" is. Nope, not gonna say.

Judy and I have spent all but seven birthdays--fifty birthdays--of hers together at her Adirondack-style camp. From her deep, dark front porch, we spend hours looking at the Sandwich and Ossipee Mountains. We listen to the lake sounds. For instance, water on rocks in the morning sounds a bit hollow. It's as if the rocks gather substance throughout the day, simply from the waves that hit. At night, the sounds are more muffled. We wait for the loons. They are rarer now on the Lake, at least in our area. Too much boat chop.

We are ten days apart, Judy and I. Our parents were best friends, and we spent our summers running between our little cottage and her camp. I admit it; her place was closer to the beach, so mostly I was at her place. On rainy days, however, or on afternoons when we just had had enough of the beach, we'd play hide and seek at my place. You'd be surprised how many crannies can hide a small child in a cottage of a thousand square feet. We built card houses out of about six incomplete card decks. Her dad was in the Reserves and brought us mess kits, so we were soldiers. There was a seventeenth century cemetery sort of near my place. The ruins of the British Governor's mansion from colonial times.

Judy and I go back to roots, and all other people from that far back in my life are gone. We sit. We read. We reminisce. We dream and say nothing, but know we have spoken volumes to each other's hearts. She is my other sister, and was before my blood sister died. I am so lucky.

It rained at some point every day but one. The temperature never topped seventy. The first time I went swimming, on my first FULL day there, it was sunny-ish in the morning, and I lasted twenty minutes and got out before my teeth chattered. I warmed up and then helped with some projects until my legs gave out, as is their custom. I read four books, the rain was so complete. It was too damp to paint because the paints would not have dried. We ate HUGE lobsters on the fourth, celebrating a day early, the first installment of her birthday. We compared gardens, the five who gathered, talked about birds and trees and remembered the beach of childhood.

Where now there is lawn, once there were white sand and white pines whose boughs scraped the water. We counted backwards from a thousand, Judy, my brother Jack, Judy's little brother Pete, and I--to punish parents who made us wait to swim after lunch. We had a gang of four one summer, Pickle-Lily Dinah-Sewer... based on various distortions of middle and last names. We four raided the old grouch's blueberry patch at the top of the island. We made half the population ill because we decided to dive for freshwater clams and stuff them as a "treat." We were kicked out of kitchens and off property. We rowed to Timber Island, got stung, then rowed back--in a leaky metal boat. Got caught in a thunderstorm in that boat and were towed home by the Lake patrol. We were grounded for a week, but I believe were given a reprieve because we were far too hard to keep home. We'd scream "OH. Sweet PEA. Wontcha dance with me!" while walking in the middle of the road, or Little Red Riding Hood, or Wild Thing. We were imaginative, mischievous, noisy, and silly, and pains in the butt.

We were children as very few children get to be. Absolutely free. Absolutely safe.

On the other day of sun, I was in the water by seven; this time I did my deep water exercises for over half an hour. I watched Mount Washington appear from behind the other ranges. I walked up to the camp, lips blue, smiling and teeth chattering. I could not get warm.

Judy said, "Why did you go into that freezing lake again and stay so long?"

"Because it was there."

"No, because you are you."

"Same thing." We smiled and I happily spent most of the rest of the day wrapped in a down comforter or sitting in the patch of afternoon sun that moved along the bits of half-hearted lawn between porch and water. You had to move your chair every fifteen minutes.

Twenty years ago, for her birthday I wrote this.

Lake Fragments ©1989
Finally, I learned the Lake trees;
White and black birch,
Beech, white pine and hemlock.
And I learned about putting in docks
And why pine forests have clean floors.
You taught me.
This does not change the magic, though,
It just puts you at its center.
But, then, you always were.

ii
The beach has slipped away
As man-sown grass encroaches.
It hides, embraced by the Lake, safe
Until men lose interest in mowing.
Then it will return,
The Lake's shining gift to the Island.

iii
Damn these holiday boats
Buzzing and groaning from one end to the other.
Churning the surface, they leave a slick
Until the Lake reeks
Of old rags in my grandpa's garage.
Yet tomorrow -- tomorrow at dawn,
When I am two hundred miles away --
The Lake will breathe silent again,
And will smell once again like peace.

iv
Midday in August
Cicada heat jams the air,
Even the Lake can't breathe.
The buzz saws rip the day
And three more birches fall.

All the same, next morning,
In the rising mists of dawn
The Lake will waken, smiling.
And still the loons will call,
And still the Lake will answer.

I go every year, just like some bird flying to its nesting spot. My grandparents' cottage has been razed and rebuilt three times. The home I grew up in has had so many remodels, I barely know it. My two brothers, my sister, my parents, grandparents--gone. Judy's parents gone. We remain for now. We go to one another a few times throughout the year. We talk on the phone.

But every July I fly to my home in New Hampshire. I sit in the presence of the little eight-year-old's dearest companion, content. I know nothing of water temperatures and reason. I must go into the water and sing to the mountains that never laugh at my aging, over-large and semi-crippled body. I tell them my stories while I work muscles that do not ache in the water. I cry. I laugh. I swim. I helicopter. I porpoise. I remember two giant fathers holding their breaths and diving in from the opposite end of the beach; Judy and I wait in breathless, almost fearful anticipation. I feel her father's giant hands cup me from below and launch me HIGH into the air, and a I fly, then land like a goony bird, butt first, sliding across the water briefly, before I sink -- and I hear Judy beside me, launched from my father's long-fingered catapult. I leap up and then submerge, for the joy in the memories and in the moment. We meet one another's eyes and the pains and ecstasies of fifty-seven years need no words.

We remain together, needing only these few days in each other's company to strengthen a bond as deep and as far reaching as the roots of the century-old trees around the camp. Our grandmothers were friends in their gardens. We have plantings from their rhythms as well. Plantings from our mothers' gardens. Memories of each other's fathers' rumbling voices in chests against which we lay. This is not vacation with her. It is tilling my soil and fertilizing my roots. It is the knowledge of home in the bones.

***

Judy has leukemia... not a treatable kind. In the miracle she has always been, after eight years, she still remains asymptomatic. She remains the strong, gentle, quiet Jude. I remain the chatterbox, silly, gentle, Jet.

Every July, I run to the Lake and jump in. Why? Because it's still there.
Every July, we aim our souls toward each other and jump in. Why? Because we're still there.

...Together