endings and beginnings
February 14, 2011
I was reading back several entries in my journal. I found myself in the middle of a sweltering July. The power had just gone out and of course, I had done what anyone would do in the middle of a power outage in stifling heat. I found a lantern, set it on my desk and pulled out my journal and began to write. I wrote about the opera that I had just been to, the fishing experience with Dad the night before, I wrote about how I wished I would stop relying on myself and that I wished I was not so hasty. I remember that opera, clearly was if it were yesterday.
It was Aaron Copland’s The Tender Land and it was beautiful. I was a week or two out from leaving for college and I sat in the seat I always sit in, waiting for the climatic end of the first scene. I remember that the story made me feel strange and since it was about a young girl leaving home, I felt connected to it, but yet, almost wishing that she wouldn’t leave, that she would stay, I wished for her so many things, but mostly, I wished she wouldn’t leave.
“Look straight out across to the middle of the lake.”
“Okay…”
I raised the rod high above my head and used all my might to flick the fishing line across the lake, I envisioned it landing so far out that Dad, watching me, floating in his kayak, would be impressed. I waited for the lure to make that sound “plop” and to see the ripples and that thin fishing line across the lake. Nothing. I waited another second. Still nothing. I tugged on the fishing pole. I had something, but it wasn’t coming from the lake. Way over to my right and about 30 feet up, my fishing hook was nicely entangled in an Evergreen. Dad sighed and paddled to the dock. “I told you to look to the middle of the lake…” We can laugh about it now, now that the lure is out of the tree, the fishing poles and kayaks are put away in the garage, the snow covers the ground, and we are safe and warm inside, always looking out the window for some sign of summer.
