A couple days ago I went with my cousin Darcy to Peaks Island. I brought her to the cottage where I spent childhood summers and the rocks below where I spent many hours. It was a drop dead gorgeous day. She, like me, loves sitting still and that is what we did, just looking out at the view, and lying on the rocks...for well over an hour.
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| Darcy feeling it on the rocks... |
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| view of Pumpkin Nob and Long Island (Maine) from the rocks |
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| view of the cottage from the rocks - I slept on sunporch...imagine! |
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| Darcy on the ferry from Portland - pretty rock-n-roll, I think. |
When we approached the cottage a rare crow made an appearance, which I think may have been Tom, since his bird was the crow.
The times I have been at the cottage in the more recent past have been with people who found it hard to sit still and so I did, too. Was so lovely to be with someone who could absorb it in the same way I do, simply because we are temperamentally suited to such things.
With Marietta up here it is much the same. She, like Darcy, does not need lots of stimulation or To Do stuff. We write, sit, talk, whatever.
This morning, I woke up and went down to the dock to meditate, then when I was done, Marietta was getting up. I went for a swim and then we had breakfast. We talked for a while, then she went to take a nap and I went down to the dock to write in my journal. Life's tough. I hope you feel sorry for me.
I thought there was no WIFI but found some so now writing here. Last night, though, I did not have internet access so began writing the grandmother book again in the still stillness of midnight by the lake (well, earlier there had been fireworks - day before Independence Day - which it is today...and the fact Mitt Romney is here in this town I am trying to ignore...and because we are on a separate lake than him, we can...happily, we skipped the parade, which would probably have meant getting frisked by Secret Service or something...eww.)
Going back to Maine later today to have dinner with my mother at a great lobster place on the water, and tomorrow back to steamy NYC.
Ever since the Memorial Service for Tom I've felt quite peaceful. I feel again like I did after he died, which is that his spirit is quite near and even inside me. This is how I felt after my grandmother Jani died. It's very specific.
I don't know if this feeling will remain with me in NYC or not. Sometimes this feeling of such peace and stillness can feel pretty remote there. While I feel at home and even in some ways peaceful in the city, there is something about the woods and the water in remote New England towns and islands that is its own thing that is hard to replace.
The Memorial Service was lovely by the way. Sweet and sad and funny. Songs were sung, the weather was beautiful, the river visible, the room full to bursting with people who loved Tom. Children and grandchildren spoke, We Shall Overcome was sung in honor of when Tom and a group of black and white people sung it together in apartheid South Africa...that was the song I could barely make it through I was crying so hard...it came right after what I said (last post) so that added to it.
But a sense of something special having happened and all of it so heartfelt.
Now to enjoy my last hour in this peaceful spot....and I have made you all a video so you can see it:
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