Once upon a time I had a cabin, though it may have been a kindness to call it such. Shack. Shanty. Maybe hopeless? Most of my friends thought so.
I had visited a friend there once, met the landowner, who remembered me. My friend eventually moved on and away, and I received a phone call asking me if I was interested in "the camp." I was.
So it came to pass that I had thirteen questionable windows with a lake view in a rustic (I am being kind here) cabin. I cleaned, cleaned again, whitewashed, and began to create a sanctuary for myself. A nook with a water view for my bed. A dining table by the window with a view of water's edge.
I rebuilt plumbing, created a working kitchen, added bookshelves everywhere and settled in for eight months of every year (it had no heat, no water in winter). My city apartment collected dust; the cabin was my heart and soul. That happened instantly, the moment I first turned the key in the door.
I would come home at night and swim in the cove in the moonlight, soothing after a high pressure day of breaking news, of always being "on." I would read books while curled up on my bed, watching raindrops race against the windows. I spent hours on my neighbors pontoon boat, simply floating around the lake, or anchored in the center. I never installed a phone there. Amenities were sparse.
But at night, away from the citybright, the sky filled with stars.
My mom "got it," this obsession with the shanty and the lake. My daughter "got it." But few of my friends did.
"It's old."
"It's decrepit." (Only on the outside now).
"How can you..."
But my needs are simple, simpler than most. Each morning I awoke and prepared a cup of coffee. I sat at that table by the window and watched an egret land beside my dock. Faithful to the minute. And for an hour each morning we breakfasted together, I sipping my brew and munching toast, she stepping lightly in the water's edge, picking and choosing her catch of the day.
In this small cluster of shanties at the top of a lake, surrounded by state forests and marshland, I felt my soul setting roots, tuning into rhythms the city can never know.
I too, though, reached that time to move on. It happens. A glitch in a 100 year old legal document scattered all seven occupants from all seven shanties in that cozy little wooded commune.
I miss that time at the lake. I miss the leaky roof and sagging floors and the water view. I miss the moonlight dancing across my pillow. I miss the solitude and the silence.
Most of all I miss the egret I had come to know so well.
Funny how life can sneak up on you.
Little more than three weeks ago, I awoke at 4 a.m. with crushing chest pain. Heart attack maybe?
At the hospital I bypassed registration and landed in ER attached to wires and IVs. Not my heart. Massive infection of gall bladder. Partially collapsed lung. No warning that didn't look like my flu and pneumonia of weeks before.
From the la-la land of modern pharmaceuticals I spent four days getting well enough to even have the needed surgery, and another seven bed-bound and hot-wired to modern medical before I could come home.
I remember feeling a small warm hand in mind in the anesthetized post surgical days, my eldest granddaughter, warm and loving. Daughter and granddaughters perennially there. The eldest promptly moved into my home to help "take care of grandma" when I, weakened and still very hurting, returned home with a stitched up body.
And when that beautiful girl would hold my hand as I walked, I remembered how I used to hold my aging mother's hand, often weak, ever more frail, and how she used to tell me how warm my hands were when wrapped around hers. Time shape-shifted around me, and for a moment I was my mother.
I'm still young, and young at heart, and this unanticipated illness will pass, perhaps not as quickly as it would have 20 years ago, but it will pass. I will be back to my bouncing (okay, I really don't bounce -- not my style) and active, energetic self, perpetually busy studying, learning, working, writing.
But the view from the other side of the bedrails, the experience of being helpless, at the mercy and under the care of everyone else for one's most basic needs, is humbling. I think I would rather be the caregiver. I've been one for so many years.
A minister and good friend of mine succinctly suggested that I "let someone else have a turn at helping" and with those words in mind, I graciously accepted the help and kindness of family, friends and strangers who have been there for me through this unexpected physical trial.
In the corner of my mind, though, I still can't wait to regain my independence and mobility, and return to my familiar role as the "helper."
There is something to be said for solitude. For taking the phone off the hook (or ripping it out of the wall), for vowing never to have a cell phone or beeper, for not being concerned with online accessibility while traveling.
It's called disconnect.
Disconnect quickly shape-shifts to "re-connect." As in reconnect with yourself.
As I journeyed across the country, by Greyhound, I watched the landscape roll by. Mountains, valleys, rivers, bridges, cityscapes, pasture, windfarms. I wasn't plugged into an IPod or Walkman. I listened to the murmured conversations around me, watched people, and slowly let my brain jump off the fast track to a realm of "taking it as it comes." The kids call it "whatever."
In Vermont, atop a snow-covered (as in four feet of snow) mountain, I curled up in a recliner by a large picture window, a huge black lab puppy with paws bigger than my hand curled up in my lap. The only sound was -- silence. The occasional crack of wood from the wood stove.
I Connecticut, I nursed a case of the flu from my hotel room, just me and my bottle of NyQuil and a jar of Tylenol. Oh, Kleenex too.
At college, with its magical snow-covered landscape, I kept early hours (not counting two nights of late breaking news I managed long distance), retiring to my private room to rest and recharge myself. I seemed to need a lot of that this time around.
I give a lot of myself on that altar of family, friends, and community action. I always have, but I guess I am not as young as I used to be (I'm not dead yet, though). I just need a bit more time to recharge. And I have set my priorities to a difference order by placing my self and my need for periodic solitude at the top of that priority list. I think I have earned it.
I am home again, but already planning a summer sojourn back to New England, maybe to Canada, and who knows where else. I do know that once I am north, my schedule (other than school) will follow no fixed pattern and have no fixed points of accessibility for those I leave behind. They'll just have to cope with it. I'll be too busy doing, well, whatever I feel like doing. Isn't that what vacation is all about?
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