Reading: The Hundred Years War

Moving: swimming and walking

Watching: "Little Foxes"

Listening: peepers

18 June 2001: Monday

In the late morning, we set off to visit our grandmother. This distressed both of us. When BHM knew he was dying, he reassured my sister, "Well, you know I never wanted to get old." He was making light of his mortality, but there's more reason than vanity to dread the prospect. I don't want to talk about Gran. I should be stronger; I should try to be able to handle it.

As we sat on Granny's bed talking to her, we faced her in her chair and over her shoulder could see into a room across the hall. There, an old man sat. Neither of us particularly thought much of this until we each noticed the wad of paper in his hand. At that point we looked anywhere else we could until the wiping was over, but then as he lurched forward to stand up, our eyes automatically caught the motion. We have now seen a ninety year old man's penis. Sometime, when his grandchildren visit him, I hope no one sees my grandmother in the same state. The loss of dignity quickly follows the lack of independence.

So we left. Alanis Morrissette and the prospect of the lake helped our spirits to regroup, plus milkshakes from Hallmark's, and then we were on our way to the lake.

With all the rain the day before, the forest road was in the worst condition I've ever seen it and the lake's outlet stream had flooded the road. I had been filming since we returned to Old Lyme, all the way up Neck Road, and here I scanned the camera: "This is the lake where CLH gave me a birthday party three years ago. It went off quite well except when cars interrupted us." The water was halfway up the wheels. That was fun.

I kept the video rolling all this time, parking and walking down the path and wading into the lake. Since it wasn't my camera, I didn't want to leave it in my backpack when I swam, so I walked back to the car to put it in the trunk. I discovered my wallet in my pocket and tossed that into the trunk too. On my return to the lake I saw a note printed in the sand of the path. Since our names were in birth order, I I quickly dismissed my initial fear of a stalker. In earshot of CLH, I started, "CLH, someone wrote in the dirt at the top of the path, "Hi--" and a woman finished with our names. She was sitting near CLH and at first I thought she knew us. But no, she was just wondering, as we were, what this was. But it must have been our father.

I love my lake. The weather, today, was perfect. Sunny and warm and much less humid. I had my lake, a book, my sister, and a mocha milkshake from Hallmark's: perfect.

After I blew up the rafts (one of my camel duties)--and I made CLH fill up the pillows, which had a separate valve--we floated around the lake for a while, me paddling and pushing my sister in front of me (another camel duty). (Camels can't cook, of course.) I was wearing contacts. I used to swim with no problem with my original contact lenses, which I wore daily for a year or so until they wore out. After I got prescription sunglasses, I guess I didn't wear contacts by the apartment pool, and of course I never wear them under goggles doing laps. So either I'm unaccustomed to swimming in lenses or these daily disposables are that much more likely to float around. And I'm not entirely sure the base curve of my right prescription is right--I've noticed on my bike with more wind in my face that the right lens doesn't seem to fit as securely. I had a couple of scares when the lens went on walkabout somewhere on my scalera until finally it returned to my iris. However, wearing the contacts enabled me, when halfway across the lake, to spot our father upon his return. So I paddled us back, reminding myself of a Kinetics boat.

Yes, our father left the note. He also wanted to know if we noticed the dead deer on the way in. No, and we exchanged looks: this kind of thing is our father's sort of landmark. "I don't know how you could have missed it," he said, "It was right after the brook flooded the road and ripe as hell." Right after the flooded bit of the road is when we were laughing hysterically recounting my birthday party and when I was standing on my seat out the sunroof filming backward at the flood. So we missed the venison. But I laughed at my father, which I'm just learning to do to his face, teasing him about what he remembers from Rocky Mountain National Park. The one thing he remembers is a large, nearly perfectly spherical rock at the base of the falls on the North Inlet trail on the west side. I told CLH later--because RSH would never have got it--that he reminded me exactly of the Americans the Reverend Eager mocks in "A Room with a View," where a daughter asks her father what they saw in Rome and the father says that Rome's where they saw the yaller dog.

He didn't stay long, but gave us each a kiss and went on his way. He had asked if we could have breakfast that day, but with how late my sister sleeps, if we had had breakfast before visiting Granny we probably wouldn't got to the lake at all that day. When CLH first started suggesting visits to this friend and that friend during my precious daylight hours at the lake, I suggested everyone meet us there. As it turned out, our parents did--separately.

We left in the later afternoon. At the car, I noticed the trunk was open. Not wide-eyed open, but open. I gulped and blanched and opened it further, and there were the camera and my wallet, so my heart started beating again. When I told CLH I wanted to show her Ely's Ferry Road, she agreed to this, which pleased me. She had possibly never before been down that road, which is beautiful and has my house on it. My house is at the end of the road, on the river; it has a boathouse and a garage with a handyman's apartment attached. It used to be painted Colonial yellow with white and dark green trim but has been repainted white with white and dark green trim since I last saw it two years ago. This allows me not to crave it so much, which is good. It's only three million dollars.

And then we went to PGN and soaked up Phoebeness. Also we checked on a Sinclair Lewis story CLH had tried to talk to RSH about the day before. He remembered a movie; she remembered a book. Five seconds online and she had the title after 24 unwired hours. Frightening, isn't it?

At this point my sister was tired. I know she works very long, very hard hours, and has a different sleep schedule than mine, and that her sciatica has been acting up. But this was the single most frustrating aspect of the trip.

She lay on the couch and our mother grilled her about what was wrong with her, acting personally affronted that CLH has various chiropractic and podiatry problems. (Apparently my sister would have a stimulating career, perhaps as an A&P cashier, if only she had gone to UConn instead of that Gomorrah known as Boston.) This led naturally enough to CLH's feeling defensive and not wanting to tell her anything more about it, which further aggravated our mother. Happily, the Happy Couple were leaving; they go to a weekly session on marriage, on, I don't know, how a woman should be happily under her man's thumb, how God created woman out of Adam's rib, whatever. I had asked her to grant me use of keys so I could open a shed and use her bike--even though she doesn't have a helmet this didn't worry her as much as the idea of my using her car without her in it did, which shows she's more worried about the car than my brainpan--but this she forgot to do.

So I was stuck in the house all evening three days before Solstice. I should have called my babysitting family. I should have asked weeks before for CLH's permission to have college friends visit me, but we didn't have firm plans. She doesn't like to plan her vacations, which is fine; I do like to plan mine but did not, because if I had plans but then she made others that conflicted, that would be a Bad Thing. I tried not to resent her back and her need to relax and sleep but do plan to rent my own car if I do this again and otherwise be independent.

I mention this only because it bears on the conversation I was to have with our mother on Tuesday. Before the Happy Couple left Monday evening, our mother asked me what I was going to do that night. I couldn't use the rental car or BDL's car or the truck they haul their camper with; I wanted a bike on which to go to the beach or, more prosaically and closer, Roger's Lake. I did say I wished I had known CLH wouldn't want to do anything this night (like visit her own friends) because if I had I could have asked TJZD or HEBD or ABW to drive down. My mother told me I should have made plans beforehand, and I pointed out that this weekend was supposed to be CLH and my time together, and that if I had made nonCLH plans, she would reasonably be angry. My mother's response was classic: "Her anger is her own problem."

But I'd had my hours at the lake and I'd seen PGN.