Sitting up in bed on just another one of the dozens of glorious mornings of this summer in my family's lake place in western Maine, staring out the window at the ripples on the water, listening to the loons call to each other -- I imagine they're talking about what a great summer they've had too. I'm sure spending nearly twenty-five years coming up to this house has drawn me to appreciate a water view and, therefore, at some level to have pulled me toward the big old house. But more than that, it's created a sense of the pleasure of place, that four walls and a piece of land can connect one to parents who are now gone, to conversations and laughter and hugs that are part of the indelible background of a life, to the quietness of being in a spot that touches nature so closely. Certainly a house in the city is a different species than one in rural Maine but what I see as offered within those many many walls and nearby gardens and river and ocean makes me certain I can find my place, our place, there too.
I wrote my financial proposal and sent it off to Jim, the bank president, yesterday and he's still speaking with me by email so my dream still lives. Nikki, in the meantime, has sent me another discouraging note, wondering how I'll make the extra loan payments before the new apartment is completed and rent is coming in and speculating that it will take several months to finish the renovation, a position she has completely reversed herself on in just a couple of days. Well, as she says, someone has to play the devil's advocate and it's clearly not me.
Today I officially take up the apparently God-given mantle of every parent of an adolescent in the new millennium, no matter one's own personal predelictions -- "soccer mom." Kanha's first game of the season is this afternoon, producing the first busy (read: ruined -- oh, sorry Kanha) weekend of the fall. Oh well, the sun is shining, I have a book, I love to see my kid play -- it will be fine.
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