This Is Florida

When Mr. Moon and I were crossing the bay from Lanark to Dog Island we saw something we'd never seen before. I tried to take the picture but that doesn't do it justice. The colors were brilliant- blues and greens and red. Not a rainbow but clouds lit with the colors of the rainbow. I looked it up and it's a phenomenon known as circumhorizontal arc or fire rainbow. 

All my years and it was the first time I'd ever seen it. Never even heard of it. 

It was glorious. 

Here's my Viking husband. He is happiest on the water. 

The crossing went so very smoothly and we pulled up right behind the house as it was high tide. Mr. Moon toted all the bins and ice chests up to the house and we turned on the AC and put things away and tried to cool down. It is wicked hot. 

All is well here in our little shacky house. Its smells as it always does with its particular odor of baked wood and old furniture and sulphur water and something undefinable which is probably made up of the dried husks of scorpions and the restless spirits of those who haunt this place. 

We've had our nap and the tide is going out. I am sitting on the back porch (how I love a porch) and the island insects are chanting their late afternoon devotions and dragonflies do air acrobatics and the pine trees and scrub oaks reach out their wind-twisted branches. 

The sky to the east grows dark and thunder rolls across the bay. 

I am most glad to be here with my Viking, my love, my husband. 

Sunset pictures to follow unless there is a storm and that would be fine too. 

My Grandsons Are Coming.

Mr. Moon is on his way across the bay to pick up Lily and Jason and the boys to bring them over and they've never been here, those boys, not even Owen and I worry. I worry too much. Jessie has come down with the Asheville cold that Vergil already has and that big bay! And my tiny boys.
Well. Lily is determined.
The men and Jessie went fishing yesterday afternoon and caught grouper and we had a feast last night of fish and also salad from Julia and Jessie's gardens and sweet potatoes and homemade bread. We sat on the porch to eat and it was as fine as it could be.
I hear the wind whistling through dunes and pines. I hear the osprey calling.

Another Friday Night

So Hank and his friends are on Dog Island which is SO primitive that when a sea fog rolls in (which it has) you can't see shit and he can't find the house and no, we are not surprised because we've been there. We've done that.

A tiny island with about forty-something houses and two roads and yet, given the right circumstances, or the WRONG circumstances, you can't find your own damn house.

I swear to god.

Meanwhile, back here at the ranch. it's Friday-night martinis and I've cried over the fact that one day we will be leaving this house but not in a bad way. In a life-is-full-of-changes-and-I-am-with-you-on-that-one way.

Mr. Moon is on the phone with Hank, the green beans are being sauteed with garlic and sliced almonds and the deer meat and vegetables are simmering in the pot.

You know what I think? I think that by midnight Hank will have found the house and they will all have unloaded and started drinking rum or whatever their beverage of choice is.

Life is so funny. I really hope that I can remember that no matter what happens.

Watch out for the sea-fog, y'all.

Love...Ms. Moon

Return

Well. We're home.
And instead of it being 7:52 p.m. it is 8:52 p.m. and fuck that shit.
Arrrgggh.
So speaking of pirates, my own personal pirate coconut-head boyfriend was waiting for me when we got back to the island. He's a bit gap-toothy but so I am. I just love that jaunty ring in his ear, don't you?

Anyway, the trip over in the Winky II went just fine and there I was with my orange clown hair so it was fitting and Jessie and Vergil were at the dock when we got there, both of them with their long legs and hugs and help and we got the old jeep loaded up and headed to the house and it was just as it always is- smelling of Dog Island and old wood and fried fish and that iron/sulfur water and it was nice to be back.

I immediately went out back and took a picture. This is the bay shot through the old bloom of the aloe plants that our friend Tom, with whom we share the house, has planted.

We unloaded groceries and put things away and made up our bed and I just had to take this shot:

Is Mr. Moon like the cutest guy in the world?
Yes. Yes he is.

Vergil stole my heart by making us shrimp quesadillas and before I knew it, gin and tonics were being poured and mixed and served and we ate lunch and okay, I had to have a nap. Wouldn't you?

We got up just as the sun was setting but Lord, it was cold and I took a few quick pictures and then ran back inside.
Here's one.

And Mr. Moon grilled steaks and oh, honeys, the whole weekend went like that.
Eat, drink, sleep, eat, drink, sleep.
Read.
Walk.
Again. Repeat. Shower, rinse, repeat again.

And read. Read, read, read.
I started and finished My Family And Other Animals and was completely charmed. Ah- the days when a ten-year old boy is set free on a Greek island (or any island, for that matter) to roam with his dog and spend hours and days and weeks on his belly looking at life close-up as it is lived under a leaf, under a rock, under the sea. Lo- thank-you so much. I loved it. As you knew I would.

On Friday I walked for maybe an hour or so on the Gulf and it was a time of complete peace. No headphones in, no one beside me, just me and my legs and my bare feet and miles of white Gulf beach. I was accompanied by birds and the sea was flat and there were great pools of coquinas, perhaps mating, who knows? not me? and I did not have my camera to catch that. It was a mindful and grateful a time as I have had in recent memory.

The sunset that night was not was accompanied by a Nor'Easter and so we walked on the bay a bit to enjoy it.

Two men I really love. Vergil, after stealing my heart with those quesadillas, continued to do so all weekend. He is the sort of man you would want to fall in love with your daughter and he treats her with respect and humor and he is smart and can cook and cleans up and well, yeah. That boy is FINE! And Jessie knows it. And now, so do we.

So do we.
He feels like family.

Here's our little house in the light of the setting sun:

We took a bay-side walk the next morning and the funny thing about our walks is always this- we say, "Let's just go walk for a few minutes,"


and we all agree to do so and we start out, one foot in front of the other and we study the water and we check out whatever has been washed in.


Are there sea slugs? Is there bait fish? Are there horseshoe crabs? How much sand has been washed away here? Do you think that there is more sand here than there was before? Oh look- there's an osprey nest! Or is it an eagle nest?

And look! Fiddler crabs! And come on, let's just keep going until we reach that place where the creek comes out....


and before you know it, we've walked for an hour and then there's an hour's walk back but what do we care? What else is there to do?

What else?

Eat. Rest. Drink. Read.

Yes, we danced a bit.
We laughed a lot.
There was fishing. There was a great deal of cuddling.

There was Kathleen on the phone. Her ex-husband had died and she was with him when he did.

Ah. Well. Too much to say, too much to feel.
"He has no problems anymore," I told her. So lame. What more could I say? She there, me on the island.
"I love you. I am so proud of you for helping him go. You did a good job."

We came home today and the truck got broke-down on the side of the road and there we were in the middle of the worst n0-see-ums in the world but so what? We lived. Mr. Moon fixed the truck. We come home and I find that there has been a huge devastation in Japan.

Ah-lah. This world. It never ends, does it?

Well. I had a weekend. Some of it was perfect and some of it was hard but Lord let me tell you, there was love.

And here we are, back again. Chickens all present and accounted for. Tomorrow I will take my mother to get a molar removed. Freddy wants to film something this week. Can I play a grandmother who is dying of cancer?

"Give me a script," I tell him. "I can do it."

And on Wednesday, Owen will be here.
"Meir-Meir!" he will say and maybe, if I am lucky, "Ah-yah."

I went to the island. I came home. The dogs peed on my suitcase. I am doing laundry. We have Sprung Ahead.

We are here.

I have missed you. I have found myself and sometimes that was wonderful. I have learned to love someone that my daughter loves. Truly and fully-hearted.

I wonder what it is like on the island right now. Is the wind blowing? Is the Gulf flat or rolling? Are the osprey tucked up in their nests?

But oh, Lord. I am so happy to be here. When we pulled into Lloyd I breathed a sigh of deep relief. This is where I live. There is where I belong. There is where I am so grateful to be with my chickens at roost and my peas growing up and my bed, my bed, my very own bed where I sleep with my love and my least dog and where I can get my hands on all of my children should I need to. Where the oaks are so tall and so wide and so old, where the wisteria is beginning to bloom.
This is where my work is, my loves are, my garden is. This is where the dirt is from which I gather my strength.

All right. More tomorrow. Sweet dreams tonight. I have missed you.

This is my life and you are part of it.

Thank-you. Amen. Good night.

Match, Hatch, Dispatch

Tomorrow I am going to Dog Island with my husband. Jessie and Vergil are there now, having been there since last Saturday. Jessie has called me several times to ask a few questions such as:
1. Where is Oyster Radio on the dial, and
2. How do you make barbecued shrimp?

I wasn't sure about Oyster Radio but I pointed her in the direction of the recipe for barbecued shrimp which I wrote out one night and put on the side of the refrigerator. That shrimp is so good that the recipe had to be written down. It is the sort of dish that makes your chin shiny with butter and oil, and your eyes shiny with delight and satisfaction.

Ah. Dog Island.

For those of you who do not know, Dog Island is a small barrier island off the coast here on the Gulf and there is no bridge to it so you can access it only by boat or small plane or, I suppose, by swimming if you don't mind the 2 1/2 miles of distance. I don't know anyone who ever swum it but I suppose it could be done.

There is nothing on the island but a few houses, a trash depot, a marina and lots of trees and beaches and swamp and nature as Florida has created it. Birds and raccoons, no squirrels. Gators. I hear there was a bear there last year and I suppose he did swim. There is just no other way he could have gotten there because I seriously doubt that a bear could stowaway without someone knowing it. There are snakes and frogs and mosquitoes and every sort of biting fly including the famous no-seeum which is a winged set of teeth, almost microscopic, which comes out at sunset.
And oh, the sunsets.

We have a small house there that we share with a friend and it is funky and plain and has everything you'd need but of course you have to bring water to drink and food and alcohol and books and laundry detergent and light bulbs and all the things which sustain you which you might be able to buy at a store but of course there is no store on Dog Island or restaurant or gas station so you bring whatever you need. It's generally a huge hassle to get ready to go which is one of the reasons I don't go there very often but the main reason is the breakdown I had there three years ago almost and it was so bad that I think I have PTSD and I'm not kidding.

Oh. It's a long story. I won't tell the whole thing here. But in defiance of all common sense I decided that the best cure for the strange and frightening symptoms of depression and panic I was suffering would best be treated by a week at the island by myself. I suppose I thought that walking and doing yoga and breathing and sleeping and eating and resting would get rid of those nasty feelings but oh, my babies, I was SO wrong.
It was SO bad.

Mr. Moon had to come and save me. And then I had to go get serious medication.

Well.

Anyway, I have not been back to the island but a few times since then and that's a waste and a sorrow, especially to my husband. But the older I get, the more I know I can only do what I can do and yes, it is good to stretch myself and not be a total pussy ass wimp but...

And but, Jessie and Vergil are there and Jessie wants her mama and her daddy to come out and spend time with them there, that place she has loved since she was a wee tot and so, I am going. We are going to have to borrow a boat because our boat engine is blown, no recovery there. And I need to go grocery shopping and do all the things that need to be done before one goes to Dog Island and I am, to say the least, apprehensive.

Yes. I am on serious medication now but it doesn't make everything better all the time. I still struggle and dammit, I hate that.

But here's another thing- I am going to this nurse practitioner you know, and she has prescribed bio-identical hormones for me, a personal mixture which must be made up by specially trained pharmacists and I'm going to go pick those up today and I wonder if they'll help. I have resisted taking any sort of hormones in the past, believing as I do that Mother Nature will work most things out in the end, especially such naturally occurring passages as menopause and I told the NP this.
She told me that yes, sometimes, but that really, Mother Nature doesn't give a shit about post-menopausal women. (She didn't use that exact phrase but you know what I mean.) That once we women have had our babies, we can go to crazy-hell for all Mother Nature cares. And I have often noted the point that if I had lived even a hundred years ago, I would have died in childbirth with my tenth baby and never had to worry about menopause.
I was discussing this with a friend and she gave me a term I'd never heard before.
It was this:
Match, hatch, dispatch.
Perfect.
I have matched and I have hatched and eventually I will dispatch and there you go. My job here, as outlined by Mother Nature, is essentially done and I accept that. But I am not dispatching quite yet. As far as I know.

So, in order to make this last part of my life the best it can be, I am going to try these yam and soy hormones and I am also taking herbs to support my adrenals and as cynical as I am about all of this stuff, I have been to the land of I-cannot-live-here and if I can take a drug called Lexapro, why shouldn't I try something called a bio-identical?

Who knows? Perhaps these herbs and plant thingees can make me feel good enough that I won't need the Lexapro? One never knows.

And so this morning I am sitting here simmering in a soup of doubt and slight panic at the idea of going to the island where I sat three years ago and contemplated the razor blades in their clever paper packages and I have so much to do and I will not have internet on the island and that in and of itself stresses me the fuck out.
I have magazines and books and oh yes, vodka, though. And we'll play cards and take walks and although it's too early in the year to swim we will be able to look at the water and perhaps see dolphins and we'll make delicious foods to eat and who knows? Maybe we shall dance. There has definitely been dancing at Dog Island before.

The ospreys will be nesting and we shall hear the whistles of the males as they hunt and the tiny peeps of the small terns as they run back and forth in the tide and the chip-chip-chips of the cardinals as they come into the feeder and the bird bath and Mother Nature may not give a shit about me but she dances pretty fancy on Dog Island and at night we'll be able to hear the crashing of the waves on the Gulf if there are waves and the moon shall rise, a sharp silver smile over the bay and the stars, if it is clear, will poke holes in the dark velvet sky and hopefully, I will be at some sort of peace, knowing that I have indeed matched and hatched and that my match is still here with me to hold me and one of my hatchlings will be there to make me laugh and feelings are only feelings and will not dispatch me.

All right. Enough. Things to do. Places to go. Bio-identicals to pick-up. Lists to make. People to see. A journey to be undertaken. A short one, in some regards, but a journey nonetheless.

And when I get back, the dogwoods will be in full bloom, I will get Owen again and perhaps the bamboo will be ready to kick and oh, the fun we will have doing that!

I cannot possibly dispatch quite yet as I have this grandson who needs me. So- take that, Mother Nature! You get most things right but Lord, you have been unkind to the grandmother in some ways and yet, you have given me the greatest gifts of my life, too, so I can't be that angry at you.

Work with me here. As I always think when I contemplate the rosary, "Mother Nature, Love me, for I have not sinned."
Not really. I have done my job and will continue to do so and to that end, I will try these melt-under-your-tongue hormones, these herbs, and make the crossing over the bay to the little house where a poltergeist lives and teases, where my daughter and her boyfriend are waiting, where the sun sets in glory, where I have known both great peace and great fear and where I will try it again and this time, perhaps, get it right.

Here

Well, we're home and I wish I could say that all the ghosts have been exorcised, all the anxiety has been relieved, that my love for the island is as it was so many years ago but I would be lying if I said that.

It was so beautiful. Dog Island is beautiful. There are piney woods and there is the Gulf beach and there is the bay and there is swamp and marsh. There are oak trees and the pines, palmetto and sea grass. There are wildflowers and wild rosemary. There are the birds from the giant blue heron to the tiny Mexican doves which come to the bird bath by the porch. There is life everywhere you look.
And the people were there too, this weekend. Almost every house I saw was occupied which is something I have never seen before. Children and parents, boats anchored, people fishing and swimming and walking the flats at sunset's low tide as Mr. Moon and I do. All of us there, getting in the last of the goodness of it before it is killed. I can say it no more clearly than that.


There is more life in those muddy tidal flats than you can imagine. And of course, with every step we took, I wondered how long all of those creatures- the big and the small- will be alive in a month.




When we were coming across the bay a pod of dolphins met us and we stopped and they played around us and I tried to take pictures but it's almost impossible, and I prayed that those creatures are smart enough to get the hell out of Dodge before the oil slick covers the still-clear waters, blue and green, and turning teal and turquoise under the setting sun. Turning into a misty silver blue after the sun has dipped below the horizon. That water.

The old Land Rover started right up which is a small miracle in and of itself. Here. I took a picture of myself in one of the mirrors as we drove along the sandy road:

And the house was waiting for us, still standing. Always another miracle. It needs painting, the deck off the side is falling off, the steps are not so sure, but there it was.

A tiny frog, friendly and spotted, was perched just above the door knob as I went to unlock it.

The view out the back was as gorgeous as ever. The water was still, the air was too.

The two sentinel pines still stand but the beach grows smaller every month and there is only a strip of sand where there used to be a beach and I know that one day they will be gone, those beautiful pines, unless a storm somehow brings us more sand. It happens. The island shifts and changes, it has forever.

And I was happy to be there but I was not. I tell you this- I think the suffering I did while I was in that house was more profound than I even know. It was hard and what made it even harder was the beauty of it all. Add to that the death which is surely flowing our way and well, bittersweet doesn't even begin to describe how I felt this weekend.

Saturday morning Mr. Moon got up before sunrise to go pick up Jessie and two of his friends to go offshore fishing and when I got up in the empty house, I felt panicked. I couldn't eat. I decided to go for a walk before it got too hot. I left the house with a bottle of water and the camera, sunscreened and with my hat on and I walked on the Gulf for awhile where I took this picture of how clear the water is:

A man was swimming with a dog and when I walked by, the dog barked at me and tried to swim in as if to get me. I knew it was false threat but it added to my anxiety as did the blank shore of the Gulf. I do not love the Gulf side of the island the way I love the bay side. The bay has trees and so many different birds. The Gulf has that endless water, the white sand, the houses which are losing their footing as the water creeps up closer and closer and the unrelenting sun which even at ten in the morning beats down with a powerful force. I stripped down to my bathing suit and got in the water and let it rush over me and breathed into the current. I tried to slow my heartbeat. I tried to cool my body.
I crossed back over to the bay and made my way home. I found a wedding bouquet of balloons, so incongruous and odd in the dunes where the birds are nesting.

I took its picture. I wondered who the bride and groom were and where they were married. I thought about their hearts soaring as the balloons were released after the vows were said. I tossed them back into the air and they floated for a moment but came back down to earth.


Mr. Moon and Jessie came back home and brought a cobia to clean for me to cook. We played cards, I lost every hand. I was so happy to have that man and that girl back with me. The house let go of its sadness for awhile and we drank beer and listened to Prairie Home Companion and made bawdy jokes as did the people on the show. I made the most beautiful pie I've ever made, rolling out the crust with a bottle full of wine from the refrigerator.


We watched the sunset again, we walked the flats again. At this time of day, there is no way to take a bad picture. Everything is lit with magic. Everything is every thing and a metaphor for it all, lit with that ethereal light.


If there is anything more beautiful than a sunset over the water I don't know what it could be.


One's child, perhaps, sitting in the glow of it. That could be more beautiful.

We ate cobia that night, as firm and fresh as any fish I've ever eaten, and okra cooked with tomatoes and onions and corn and peppers. We watched a Northern Exposure episode in which a circus comes to town and the Flying Man falls in love with Marilyn.

We slept. We got up and I was anxious again. We did the laundry, washed all the sheets and towels, I took a picture of the pines beside the house.


And the dragonfly which sits on top of the lightening-blasted flag pole.

We packed the clothes, the left-overs, the shrimp and crab we bought on the way down we never ate, the sea trout Mr. Moon caught this morning in the surf.
We came home.

We are home.
The chickens are all here. Hank took good care of them. Mr. Moon cleans off the boat. I need to go marinate some shrimp and the trout for our dinner.
I am filled with it all and don't know where I am- here or there. Writing this, I am back there. Stopping and looking around, I am here where my phlox is beginning to bloom everywhere, bringing a pink-purple color to the palate of the green which is my yard in Lloyd. A color not unlike the sunset on Dog Island where I know the sun is setting, where I know the water, at this moment, is still clear and where all the creatures, at this moment, are safe.

People change. Their hearts and minds change. So do islands. So do bodies of water. Some change is good and some is uncomfortable and some is deadly.

We experience what we can while we can. We cross the water, the boat carries us to this side, to that, our hearts carry us up like a bouquet of balloons and then fall back down, a craziness of gold and purple in the white-sand dunes.

We think about it, we hold it all in our hearts, those crazy up-and-down hearts. We consider ourselves lucky, no matter what. We play the hands we're dealt, we do the best we can. We hold tightly to the hands of those we love.

We breathe and cool our bodies in the water. We make a pie. We fry a fish. We cook some grits.

We come home.

We do.

You Can Run But You Can't Hide

I can't tell you how many times I go to write a post and think of Garrison Keillor saying, "It's been a quiet week in Lake Woebegon."
In fact, I do believe I've said, "It's been a quiet day in Lloydbegon," or something like that before.
When I started doing this blog I should have come up with a different name for Lloyd, I think. It's such a prosaic name. When people around here ask me where I'm from and I answer, "Lloyd," they often say, "I know I've seen that sign. Where IS Lloyd?"
And there's something nice about that- the fact that people who live fifteen miles down the road really don't know where Lloyd is. Sometimes I feel like Lloyd is one of those places time forgot and I love those places. Apalachicola is like that and so is the tiny village where I lived as a child. Roseland is it's name and although the area surrounding it has grown like a mushroom cloud, Roseland itself is almost exactly the same as it was fifty damn years ago although now some of the houses look better than they did then which is odd as they were only old shacks to begin with.
I guess I like the forgotten places. They used to advertise the area down near the coast here as "The Forgotten Coast" and that was true, too. Fishing villages still thrived and yes, there was tourism but it was a mild and mellow kind. No spring breakers, no giant condos, no outlet malls or titty bars, just miles of beautiful powdered white sand and sweet blue water.
Things got a little scary there during the big real estate boom but a hurricane or two and the real estate bust pretty much took care of that. Took care of a lot of things, not all of them good, especially for the fishermen.
Anyway, as some of you know, Mr. Moon and I share a little shacky place on a barrier island called Dog Island about two hours away from here with a friend and I guess Mr. Moon and I are going down there this weekend. I think we all feel as if we need to get to the beach while we still can. While the dolphins and turtles and ghost crabs and sea gulls and ospreys and fish and egrets and herons and sea slugs and horseshoe crabs are all still there. While the water is still clear, the sand is still white.
Shit. I almost want to pretend none of it's there at all because the thought of it being raped and ruined is more than I can bear. I swear, I think it's going to be like visiting a dear friend whom you know has a terminal illness. You want to see them before they leave but you know it's going to be the saddest thing you've ever done.
But. We're going. I'm going to the store tomorrow before I get Owen to pick up all the things we need. We can take a lot of things from the garden. We'll load up on water and we'll take some beer and juice and I'll make sure to have buttermilk for pancakes and sunscreen and bug repellent and everything I can think of for two days in what is a virtual wilderness, albeit one with electricity and running water. You can't drink the water but you can shower in it, flush the toilets with it.
We eat all our meals there on the back porch overlooking the bay and we watch the osprey dive for fish to take back to their enormous nests which they build balanced precariously in old pines and we listen to the water rolling up onto the shore and then back out again. We hear the wind whistling through the dunes and frequently we can hear the waves on the Gulf side of the island from where we sit.
We're just going for two nights but we're going. I haven't been to the island in a long, long time. I had some rather traumatic experiences there and then the plumbing got fucked up and Mr. Moon and our friend had to replace all the pipes but I hear everything is working again.
We can take care of problems which arise in the house on Dog Island but we won't be able to do a thing if the water starts becoming black or tar balls roll in or that whipped oil and water mess they say is of the consistency of peanut butter starts washing in.
Not a thing.
So I guess we need to go visit, take it while it's there for what it is, which is up until now, almost pristine, untouched beauty.
I'll take a camera.
I'll hope for avoidance of this particular death but I'm not betting the island house. Oh wait- the island house won't be worth shit once the oil hits the beach.
Ah lah. If only that were the worst of it.
Well. It's quiet tonight in Lloyd and that's what I'm thinking about. A weekend at The Forgotten Coast on an island no one has heard of.
My kind of place, I suppose. For now. For now.

Why Insanity Is Insane

Yesterday was completely lovely. I spent almost eleven hours with Owen and when he left the house with his daddy he was in the very best mood. He was smiling and giving us big googly grins and funny faces and I think he and I have relaxed with each other. I learned something yesterday, which was that if I leave my mind out of things like changing Owen's clothes and holding him, my muscle memory works perfectly and all my old skills and abilities with babies come back and things go so much more smoothly. At one point, I found myself making bread, talking on the phone and holding Owen, all at the same time, and it was like the old days for me- I can do almost anything while holding a baby and it feels right and comfortable and I was either holding him all day or working in the kitchen with him in a little seat on the counter and stopping every few seconds to call him Mr. Goo-Goo and making him smile or making up silly songs (Owie, Boy, Joy and Toy all figure into the lyrics, as you can imagine) to sing to him and I told him about how very soon he will be helping me cook and eating soup and begging me for pieces of raw potato and how much fun all of this is going to be.
He seemed to be fascinated and interested and I am quite sure he anticipates all of these activities with great joy, that boy, that Owie, my sweet toy of a baby.

And today it is warmer and I have no baby here. I am going to go to town later on to go to the doctor with him and his mama to see if his little tongue needs clipping. I have told Lily that if they do the procedure, I will hold him so that he does not associate the pain with her. I know he will forgive me. There is no doubt of that in my mind but I would rather him think ill of me than of his mother, even for a moment.

I'm thinking today of the beach. I haven't been to the beach in so long. In fact, I haven't seen an ocean since Mr. Moon and I got back from Cozumel and I think of those ten days we spent, riding around the island on a scoot, me hanging on wearing a short skirt (my legs were still good back in August- go figure) and we were always warm and we ate the very best shrimp sandwiches in the world at a little lunch place where they laughed at me because I liked the jalapeno mayonnaise so much. And where when I slept, the turquoise Caribbean was always just outside my eyelids, right there, right there.

Mr. Moon and I, along with a friend, own a tiny cottage on the bay on a barrier island named Dog Island, about an hour and a half away from Lloyd.



There is no bridge to the island and everything must be toted there that you will need from water (you cannot drink what comes out of the tap) to food to beer to parts to fix whatever is broken because something is always broken. And you must take gas for the vehicle which gets us from the dock to the house and ice and books and magazines and well, whatever you might need. It is a sort of heaven because there is nothing there but acres and acres of wildlife preserve and it's so quiet. Only a few people live there full time and you can go for days and not see another human. Quite literally. So it is very different than a usual trip to the beach, either here or in Mexico, where you can decide to eat at a restaurant and sit and watch other people and maybe shop or whatever it is that people do at the beach besides swim and sunbathe.

The bay side, where our house is, is very beautiful. There are trees and birds and our little house has a back porch where you can sit and watch all of this and there are miles of dirt roads to walk on through woods and along the Gulf and through palmetto scrub and swamps. There are silent Blue Herons, fishing patiently on one leg and bald eagles and the mighty ospreys which soar and dive and take their catch back to their huge nests for mother and children. There are the tiny little pipers which run back and forth with the waves, searching for this and that in the sand with their beaks and there are sometimes dolphins fishing in the bay and there are the tides bring the water up close and then take it back to expose vast areas of mud flats to explore.
And there are always the most glorious sunsets.



So why haven't I been there in, well, I can't even remember?

I'm not sure. It's certainly not a luxurious get-away. As I said, everything must be hauled over and taken from dock into house and also, yes, the broken things. Will the heat work? The AC? The stove, the phone, will the water run when you turn on the tap, flush the toilet? Is there hot water if there is water? Are there new leaks? Does the car need a new battery? Will I have to get out that iron bar to smack that piece of metal in the engine to get it to run?

But it's not just all of that.

I have had some of the most profoundly traumatic events happen to me at the island. Nothing related directly to the island, but still, they happened while I was there. One was summer before last when I went to the island alone for my birthday, thinking that it was just what I needed to calm my anxious soul. I didn't realize how profoundly insane I was and my anxiety and panic grew to vast proportions there on the island while I was by myself and I walked miles and hours every day, trying to tame it. I did yoga and I wrote and I read and every moment, every second was filled with such panic that I could barely breath. Finally, Mr. Moon had to come and rescue me and when I got home, I went to the doctor and got on anti-depressants and finally the panic receded to a livable degree, which is where I am now, mostly.

Up until that visit, I had loved being on the island by myself, cooking whatever it was I wanted to eat, sleeping whenever I wanted to sleep, reading, writing, walking, sitting. It had always been glorious, despite the inconveniences, the ghost in the house, the complete solitude.
But now, when I think about being there, even with someone, even with Mr. Moon, something in my soul shuts down and whispers, no, no, no.
I am afraid to go back. And that is just the truth. The very thought of it makes me afraid. And this makes me so sad because there is no place on earth quite like Dog Island and we own a piece of it and it is right there for me to go to anytime at all.
I keep hoping I'll get over this feeling because I miss it. I miss the sound of the wind crossing the dunes and I miss the Osprey and I miss the sound of waves hitting the sand and hissing back. I miss the quiet and the pine trees and I miss the way when I wake up, I can get a cup of coffee and go sit and watch the water, the sky. I miss the radio that brings me NPR and the way I listen to music there the way I never do at home. I miss the sunsets and I miss the millions of stars at night.

Would it be possible to keep my mind out of it all, to let the muscle memory return from when I was happy at Dog Island, the way it has returned to me with a baby in my arms?
I don't know. I am anxious, just writing about it all.

Last night Mr. Moon said, "I need to go get us some grouper," and I merely murmured some agreement, thinking to myself, "Have a good time. I'll be here when you get back." But I know he'll want me to go with him. He loves to wake up early there, leave me sleeping to go out to fish, to find me there when he returns to have drinks with, watch the sunset with, dance around the living room with while supper is cooking. We always feel like we're playing house there in that little shack by the bay.

I feel like I'm cheating him and myself, both, by this fear I have. I am denying myself one of the most profound pleasures on earth. And yet- like I said- even writing about it makes me feel that panic start to swell in the pit of my stomach, that flurry-feeling happen in my brain. That I-have-to-get-control-of-this-NOW feeling. This fear that I cannot feeling.

And there is no point to this. It's just what I'm thinking about today, perhaps because I don't have a baby to tend. I don't know. There's so much I don't know.

But I do know that merely a few miles down the road and across a bay there is a little house waiting with clean sheets on the bed and a mischievous ghost and I miss it and yet, I can hardly bear the thought of it.

But anyway, there's too much going on here for me to leave now. I couldn't if I wanted to. Chickens to tend and I need to plant spinach and cabbage and oh yes, it's almost Christmas and above all, there is a boy who is my joy whose mama and daddy need me to help take care of. See? I can't go to the island. I have too much here to do and not enough time as it is.

So why do I keep thinking of Jimmy Buffett and Wouldn't You Like To Spend Christmas, On Christmas Island?

Oh. Our brains are complicated things. I wish I could turn mine off sometimes. I do. Tell it to get out of the way and let me do what I know how to do, let me enjoy what I love, whether taking care of a baby or setting a little house by the bay to rights to settle in and be cozy in and be happy in.

That's what I'm thinking about today, Monday, December 7th, 2009 as this year draws to an end and it is warming up outside and there is an island not very far away where there are pine trees and sea birds and there is sea grass and horseshoe crabs and mullet jumping with dolphin chasing them, perhaps.

But I am not there. I'm thinking about it though. And perhaps my brain is working things out and I can go back sometime soon.

I hope so. I hate being ruled by my fears, by insanity. And by god, I better be over this by the time Owen is old enough to go to the island because if there is a gift in the world that Mr. Moon and I could give our grandchildren, it is the gift of being able to spend time on a barrier island where there is nothing to do but play and fish and discover and swim and dig and watch and sleep and eat and learn and dream. And if I can't learn to love the island again for myself, I think I have to do it for Owen.

I have to. Because I love him. And I want to be able to give him everything I can, everything he has coming to him, even an island where there are ghosts for me but nothing but joy for him. If his grandmother can quit being crazy.

I'm going to try because I can't imagine anything better than holding his hand and showing him the island and watching his wise eyes grow big with the surprises we will discover there together.
I have a few years. I'll work on it.
I will.

Real Pirates Eat Apples

Well, luckily for all concerned, the pirate made his drunken way out of the Dog House before Mr. Moon returned from fishing. Mostly luckily for Mr. Pirate, I would say as Mr. Moon could have kicked his ass.

Oh wait. Mr. Pirate didn't have an ass.

But he was fun, nonetheless. He and I, drinking rum in the middle of the afternoon, him perching on my shoulder and pretending to scowl whenever I'd reach over to kiss his bristly cheek.
Yeah. Good times.

It was good times on the island. The weather was purely perfect although three types of biting insects were present, all intent on sucking our blood. The mosquitoes, the no-see-um's, as well as the horrendously quick biting flies. We got one really fine sunset but I think our camera's broken because there's not one picture from it on there. Perhaps Mr. Moon uploaded them to his computer. I do not know.

We ate some fish and took a good walk and we slept. A LOT. I didn't know we were capable of sleeping eleven consecutive hours but it would seem that we are. That was strange but I suppose we're the better for it.

But anyway, we're back in Lloyd, the dogs are still alive (sigh) and Mr. Moon has already changed his fishing persona into his hunting persona and is off for deer. He's a busy man, that Mr. Moon. He spent a lot of time yesterday fixing the screens on the back porch at the island and he did his usual great job. He can do anything. I swear. After he got the new stove hooked up before we left for the island, he said, "You didn't believe me when I told you I could do it, did you?" and I said, "Honey, the only time I don't believe you is when you tell me you CAN'T do something."

So I'm back home and glad to be. Dog Island is probably one of the most beautiful places on earth and has the sort of quiet peacefulness that people pay the giant big bucks to experience but I must admit that I get a bit antsy there. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I do. And even though I did sage the place when I got in (which I do NOT believe in, really, I don't, but what the fuck?) I still felt a bit of the old crazy-shadow falling on me now and then and I'm struggling a little. We had some great, great moments which made the whole trip worth it. One of them was the dolphin we saw coming in this afternoon and another was the way the Gulf water felt on my feet during our walk two days ago. And I did curl my toes in the sand and it felt wonderful.

But still, I'm glad to be home.

I need to take the Christmas tree down which should take about ten minutes and I need to put the rest of the decorations away and I need to do laundry. But it's good to have chores. That's part of the problem at the island- you think it would be heaven not to have bothersome things to do but really, it's the bothersome things which make the moments not involved in those bothersome things more fun.

We stopped by our neighbors' house on the island on our way out and they said, "Oh, it's the most beautiful day yet, we can't believe you're leaving!" and I said, "Well, it's always the most beautiful day when you leave, plus we'll be going to Lloyd and that does not suck either."

And it doesn't. I'm glad to be back, watching that stupid guinea hen next door trying to figure out how to get back into her pen and I'm glad to see the way the light is shining through the Spanish Moss on the oak trees. I guess I'm even glad to see these damn dogs.
And I'm glad to be able to brush my teeth with water that comes from the faucet and I'm glad to have my wireless back.

The other day I sent a friend a picture of some camellias I'd picked on my walk that are in the yard of an abandoned house. I asked him if it doesn't make him a little bit sad to think about such beautiful flowers growing where no one can see them? He replied that it shouldn't, unless you're looking for a reason to be sad, which made a lot of sense so I'm not going to be sad that a glorious sunset is cooking up behind the house on the island without me to see it.

La-di-dah and I am not the center of the universe and camellias can be beautiful without anyone to see them and so can sunsets and I'm mighty glad for the ones I got to see and I'm mighty glad to be here in Lloyd where the sky turns colors too, but tonight I'll be thinking of that night sky down at the island where the stars are so thick they're like sprinkles in a Christmas cookie, only more so, so much, much more so, and brighter by far.

I have the memories, I have the now.
And that's okay with me.

Sunset At Low Tide

Flat Water, Not Much Breeze

Do you like that picture? I hope so as it took approximately four hours to upload (or is it download?) because here on Dog Island we don't need no stinkin' wireless.

Well, actually we do need it but I can't see that happening in the near future. Dog Island is like a third world country only without the corner tienda or the availability of cable or el policia.

Oh, you can get the law over here, but it takes awhile. The same is probably true of satellite but we're not here enough to need satellite and hopefully I won't be needing the police, either.
There is crime on the island sometimes and let's not pretend otherwise! I would say that approximately 80% of the people driving on the island could not pass a sobriety test, and if you can reach the gas pedal and see over the steering wheel, you can drive, sober or not. The newsletter we get from the Dog Island board always cautions folks not to let their children drive if they don't know how but they seem to be a lot more het-up about the crime of letting your dog go unleashed.

Speaking of dogs, I did not bring one. It's sad to think that I have four dogs and yet, not one of them pleases me enough that I'd want to spend a week alone with him or her. I need say no more about that.

The picture you see is one I took in the house here on the island. That's most of the living room, looking through to the kitchen and also the hallway. The only things you can't see are the bedrooms and the bathrooms which are off the hallway. Note the lovely shaggish carpet. I have no idea who thought it would be a good idea to put carpet in a beach house but I'd say, judging from the vintageness of the carpet that he or she is dead by now. We plan to eventually replace this carpet but I think that really my husband and our partner in the house are afraid to tear the carpet up because of what they might find underneath it. It's one of those situations where if you really started to work on the house, it would never end until the entire house had been rebuilt from the bottom up and why? It's sort of a shack, albeit a lovely and light-filled shack, and one with air conditioning that works so what the fuck? It is completely adequate to our needs, which is to have a place to stay while on the island, to cook in, to relax in, to sleep in. What more do we need? Well, running water that you could drink would be nice, but there again, we're like a third world country.

It's not quite noon and I have been up for quite awhile and I have taken a good walk on the Gulf where the water was flat and a bit murky. I saw one other human and she was digging for bait. We waved but did not speak. A small plane passed over and waggled his wings, which made me smile. I walked on the bay some, too, and there is not much to report today. I saw some dead fish but that was about it. Even the birds seem to be lazy today. I have heard the osprey, but not seen it. I do, however, have neighbors, which I was not expecting. The house next door, which is almost always empty, is filled with a group of people who are doing a lot of beachy things and also making use of their boat. I can hear them quite clearly and it's a bit disconcerting but not annoying. It will become annoying if they decide to party as the day rolls into evening, which frequently happens at the beach.

I am not sure what I will be doing next. This is a funny thing about coming to the island- one feels as if one should "accomplish" something, if one is me, but really, what is there to accomplish? I suppose I could wash my cereal bowl. It takes a few days to relax into the Zen of it all, to truly realize that the hours of the day may be spent in any way one wishes and it also takes a few days to figure out what exactly it is one wishes. I suppose this is true of any vacation that doesn't involve tour groups and an itinerary. If I had an itinerary it would go something like this:

Get up, drink coffee, check out the water.
Eat breakfast while sitting on the back porch with a book while checking out the water.
Go for a walk beside the water. Check it out.
Come home, drink a lot of water.
Check the e-mail and the blogs I read. This can take awhile with the dial-up connection. While you're waiting for things to download, wander about and check out the water. Also, the sky.
Post a picture and write something.
Eat lunch on the back porch while reading and checking out the water and sky.
Contemplate a nap.
And so on.

I know I need to make some bread today because somehow I forgot to bring the loaf of five-grain sourdough I bought at Publix. This is not a tragedy in that I do love to make bread and
I have plenty of time to do it.

Eventually, it will be time to watch the sunset and have a drink. That is the highpoint of the day.

And so it goes, here on Dog Island. I have had no epiphanies, I have not died of loneliness, and if I feel a bit melancholy, well, I think I would be feeling that way at home, too.
I tend to have a melancholy heart but I know that there is always the possibility for contentment and peace and even happiness and I will be watching out for all of those as I watch the water, as I watch the sky.

Island, Ahoy!

All righty then. After we pack up everything we're going to need to eat, wear, drink, read and write on/with for the next four days and load it into the truck and the man gets the boat ready and we drive to Lanark and we load the boat and we make the small voyage to the island and unload the boat and load the Jeep and drive to the house and unload the stuff and put it all away and open up the house and open a beer, this is what I'll be looking at.
Phew!
Makes me tired just thinking about it, but that's okay because once we're there, it's all good.
Unless someone gets a rash or steps on a sting-ray or a piece of glass or something but I'm hoping none of that happens.
I plan to spend a lot of time reading, a fair amount of time napping, do some early-morning walks and watch a bunch of sunsets, weather permitting.
And I'm about to finish up writing what I can only describe as the World's Worst Novel but it will be DONE and then perhaps I'll start rewriting it or else I'll just take a deep breath and delete the entire motherfucking thing, but either way I'll have finished another book and that's something.
And we'll eat. In fact, I should be out there in that garden right this red hot second, picking lettuces and tomatoes and okra to take with us because I passed right through that produce section at Publix yesterday. We'll stop for shrimp in Panacea on the way down and I'm thinking the man will definitely catch us some fish and if not, I have canned beans.
I believe I have this dial-up modem thing figured out. We'll see.
And if I do, I'll post from the island, which will be really cool and if I don't, I'll catch up on Sunday.
Happy 4th, y'all. Have fun. Be safe and don't forget your sunscreen.

A Belly Full of Mullet, A Heart Full of Sunset

After we got to the island this afternoon and hauled all the bins and the cooler inside, I put everything away. The food in the refrigerator and pantry, the clothes in the closet and drawers.
When the empty bins had been stacked on the back porch, I started a pot of mustard and collard greens that I’d brought from the garden at home.
While I was doing this, the man and the daughter were at work on the rickety stairs. They took scrap lumber and measured and cut and nailed until the most dangerous steps were replaced with sturdy, tidy boards.
I read some from a New Yorker magazine and then, as they sawed and nailed, I drowsed on the couch. It was an amazingly beautiful afternoon, the sky clear of any clouds, as blue as a cornflower, the water smooth and pewter behind the house.
Finally, the steps project finished, the man prepared to leave. I made him a sandwich and then we all piled into the Jeep and made our way back to the boat dock.
The man wanted desperately to net a few mullet before he left- a trip to the island without catching a fish of any kind? Impossible. Ridiculous. And so he threw the cast net a few times off the dock and got one mullet. One beautiful, silver mullet which he cleaned on a board with a knife he had on the boat. A group of spring-break college students showed up and started cast netting too. They immediately gathered four fine, fat fish and we traded them one of those for several pinfish that that man pulled out of the bay that they could use for bait as they were fishing for something larger and more familiar to them than simple mullet.
We sadly kissed Daddy/Husband good-bye, he cast off and took off for Lanark to go on home.
We brought the mullet home and I covered it in a shallow pan with evaporated milk and set it in the refrigerator. We went down to the bay where the light, as always right before sunset, was of that variety that glows and covers everything from the pine trees to the water to the sand with an almost celestial meaning.
We sat for perhaps forty-five minutes, watching the sky turn from demurest pastel baby blues and pinks to what can only be called psychedelic. It was that sort of gaudy golden, orange-red light, streaking the sky and the dramatic clouds and the water, too, so other-worldly that if you painted it quite faithfully, no one would buy because of the joyful garishness of it, and would be relegated to the walls of a motel with the name of Howard Hohnson or Holiday Grinn or Stay-A-While or something like that. It looked like something from an illustrated book of the Rapture and it was all ours. The osprey took off from his nest for one last fishing trip, his mate calling encouragement as he swooped and whistled his way across his part of the bay. Finally, when the tiniest sliver of a silver moon hung like a smile above us we came back into the house and I fried the mullet, heated the greens, made a pot of cheese grits and a small pan of cornbread.
That mullet- two hours out of the water, soaked in milk and fried in flour and corn meal and salt- was the tenderest, whitest, sweetest meat you will ever want to eat. We ate it with Crystal hot sauce and fresh lime squeezed over and scraped the backbone with our teeth to get every bit of Gulf water goodness.
My only regret at this moment is that the man wasn’t here to enjoy it with us. I have to say that in the great lottery of love, I got lucky. How many men can buy the beach house, fix the steps, catch and clean the fish and then have the great and gracious grace to do all of this and then go home without having a bite so that he can go to work tomorrow morning?
Not too many I’m thinking.
And I’m mighty glad he’s mine.

Sunday, March 9, 2008
Dog Island, Florida

Back Home

It was a perfectly splendid trip to the island. We got one of the best sunsets I've ever seen on Friday night and of course we had no camera. But the picture above is one that my daughter took a few years ago and it will do.

As usual, there were a few problems: one of the toilets in the house wasn't working, several of the cold water lines were clogged, the oven is broken, and the steps up to the house are...well, let's just put it this way- if you're a big person, don't carry anything heavy up them.

But besides all of that (and that is typical, believe me), everything was just lovely. The heater did work, as did the electricity and the other toilet and the refrigerator was fine. Once when we got there, the refrigerator had broken down and it was the nastiest mess you can imagine. But there were no refrigerator-related tragedies this weekend.

The man caught some nice grouper on Saturday and we took a two hour walk that afternoon. It's so hard to judge distance on the beach. "Let's walk up to those houses," you say, and then an hour later you realize that those houses had to be three miles away, but it was perfect walking weather and we saw lots of beautiful birds and the sand was firm and all was well.

Cards were played, delicious dinners were eaten and cooked. We stopped in Panacea on the way over and bought shrimp, oysters, and a few stone crab claws. Need I say more about that? We'll be eating oysters for a week, so if you're reading this and within driving distance, perhaps you should come and help us get rid of some of them. I'm about to go out in the garden and pick spinach to make some sort of Rockefeller dish.

And thus, it was a very good weekend and we laughed a lot and I didn't bitch too much, although this is my blog so you'll have to take my word on that subject. I didn't talk to one other person besides my husband the entire weekend, and that was just fine by me. My little external modem thingee would not work with the phone line and so that was a bit of a problem. I jonesed. I'll admit it. But I kept thinking about things I'd like to talk about here and I realized something- this blog has become one of the delights of my life. And that writing is more of a joy to me than I can even begin to say.

So now we're home where the azaleas are blooming and there are cardinals at the feeder. I saw a dogwood flowering on my way home and I just feel like the luckiest woman in the world at this moment with my beautiful old house and my wireless internet.

I guess I better go unpack and start some laundry. And pick spinach and see if we have any artichoke hearts in the cabinet. I'm glad to be home, although it was mighty hard to leave the island this afternoon. It was an insanely beautiful day on the island and I'm already a bit nostalgic, thinking about what the sun is doing there now, dropping down towards the water over the west end of the island and wondering whether the osprey is out looking for his dinner.

Hopefully, we'll be going back soon. And in the meanwhile, this different part of North Florida paradise is fine with me.

I hope all is well with you. I truly do.

Dog Island

My husband and I, along with a friend, own a little shacky house on Dog Island. For those of you who are not aware that there is an island here in North Florida that goes by the name of "Dog" let me assure you that there is.

It's what we call a barrier island and there is no bridge to it and there is nothing on it except for some houses and I doubt that twenty people live there full-time, although perhaps there are. There are no stores, no bars, no restaurants, no place to buy water, bread, or beer on the island. If you run out of those things when you're there you have either do without or get in your boat and cross the bay and go buy them in Carabelle or Lanark Village. There is a grocery store in Carrabelle and there is Mike's at Lanark. You can get most anything in the grocery store and you can get beer, bread, or water at Mike's as well as gas, bait, smoked mullet and sometimes shrimp.

So when you go to Dog Island, you better take everything with you that you might possibly need and that includes your drinking and cooking water because although there is running water in all the houses, it's water of a particularly evil and sulphurous nature that no one in their right mind would drink. It's interesting to shower in it and we tell ourselves that it's good for our skin.

What you WILL find on Dog Island is nature and plenty of it. Birds galore, from the ospreys that we love to watch soar and dive and then rise up with fishes in their talons which they take to their nests to feed their babies, to the pelicans and sand pipers and fussy blue jays and the beautiful egrets which wade in front of the house in the bay, fishing slowly and patiently as the sun goes down. There are gators in the boat basin and I'm sure there are gators on the island. There are water moccasins (I have seen them) and probably other snakes as well.

There are 'coons but no squirrels.

There are pine trees and scrub oaks and sea oats. There are places on the island that are so skinny that you could spit from bay to Gulf. There are beautiful white beaches and there are the tidal flats of the bay. There are swamps and woods and on a two-hour walk you can experience all of those places.

It's sort of magic and it's incredibly beautiful and it's quiet except for the sounds of water and wind and birds and the occasional chug, chug, chugging of a diesel engine as the shrimpers make their way to and from Carrabelle.

We have no TV on Dog Island, but we do have a phone and we have a radio which I use to feed my NPR habit and there's nothing so fun as playing gin on the porch and drinking beer and listening to Prairie Home Companion on a Saturday night.

We watch the sunsets, the man fishes, I write, we walk. We play scrabble, make crazy-good dinners, and rest a lot.

Our house has a mischievous poltergeist or some such imp which loves to move things around or turn lights on and off. It mostly shows up when I'm there alone but it doesn't bother me and I just take it as another of the charms of Dog Island and find myself fussing at it and saying things like, "Would you please leave my library books alone?"

We've gone there with all the kids and their friends and that's been fun and I've been there alone by myself for a week at a time (and when you are alone on Dog Island, you are ALONE) and I've been there with just my daughter once for a week and even though she was a teenager, she contentedly spent her hours knitting and taking pictures and playing with the dogs and taking long walks with me and at night we listened to CDs of David Sedaris and we laughed so hard we cried.

And sometimes just my husband and I go over for a few days and we're leaving tomorrow, just the two of us, for the weekend.

So I need to get my ass to Publix and buy food and water and charcoal and I'll buy too much. I always do. I tend to worry that we'll run out of coffee or flour and so I always buy those things and then when we get there I open the cabinets to find four giant cans of coffee and five bags of flour but better too much than not enough, right?

We'll haul the stuff over there in the boat and unload it and load up the old Jeep we keep parked by the basin and then drive to the house and unload the Jeep and haul all the stuff up the stairs and put it away and open up the house which has been sitting, patiently and crack a beer and go down to the bay and see how much of our property has been eaten by global warming and the rising of the seas or perhaps just wind and time. We'll set up the canvas chairs on the beach so that when sunset comes we can sit and watch as the sky goes through all of its color changes and the sun makes its final decent into the water and the stars start to come out.
Then we'll go inside and put on some music and he'll grill something and I'll chop up and cook something and we'll meet in the living room and dance a little dance and we'll eat and play scrabble and go to bed.

Rinse and repeat for Saturday.

On Sunday we'll wash the sheets and towels and set the house all back in order and pack up our stuff and load it all up to haul back home. We'll lock the house up and close the shutters and curtains and leave the place to the poltergeist who will be bored without us there and of course the weather will be the most perfect it's been all weekend because that's always the way it is on Dog Island.

Just as you're getting comfortable and have slowed down enough to truly enjoy it, it's time to go.

But it's a comfort, just knowing it's there, waiting for us, good Lord willing, the bay don't rise, and the hurricanes don't wash it away.

I'll report in.