Closing Up the Cottage

It’s 42 degrees this morning by the lake. We’re closing up the big cottage today and yesterday. Well, getting the main stuff done—not the blowing-out-the-water-lines-and-pouring-in-antifreeze part. That comes last. The little cottage, where I’m sitting in the warmth of a real furnace, is still open. The big cottage has no insulation and no heat but a fireplace, which is now covered with its steel sheet, the screen and ash bucket pushed up against it. We didn’t have to clean it out because we had no occasion for a fire this summer—not even one.This unnatural heat is alarming, as are all the signs of change and distress in the environment. Fewer fish caught. We used to see hundreds of schools of minnows around the dock. You used to be able to stand  and let them nibble your toes. You used to be able to sweep a net across and have enough to fish with for aeons.  Now there are a few lone, small schools. And almost no crawdads. The ones we do have are Asian, having driven out the indigenous smaller ones.We had a good summer with the children and grandchildren. Their favorite thing is to run the whole length of the dock and jump in, with someone at the side throwing them a ball just as they jump. The idea is to both leap into the water and catch the ball. They also were crazy about my paddle board. As many as five at a time would fight to hang on, or would dump the one person who managed to stand up on it. Jake, who’s a champion swimmer, took off downwind on it by himself and when he turned around, was immediately dumped by the wind. He had to lie on the board, lodge the paddle under his stomach, and hand-paddle all the way back.Noah managed to extract every fish possible in the time he was here by getting up and standing stoically on the neighbor’s dock for hours every day, pole in hand, worms beside.We had a hard summer as we watched my sister suffer horribly with back pain and then endure major surgery and long rehab. And my brother-in-law discover that he may have a life-threatening illness. Plus, plus.So.So as we take the porch furniture, the tables from the eating porch, the screens and screen doors in for the winter, it all looks forlorn around here—a place made entirely for wet feet, laughing, screaming, whining, giggling, and splashing. Empty. Everything feels like an elegy. The end of summer, the dwindling of the health of the planet, the death of the baby panda, our own aging, the illnesses of those we love, the cottage’s aging (now 112 years old).How does one “balance” joy and sorrow? Not balance, which puts joy on one end of the see-saw and sorrow on the other, but both/and. And even that’s too much separation. What’s meant by sorrow? It’s only a label. What’s meant by joy? It’s only a label. Really, there is just what is.Which doesn’t preclude working for a healthier planet, or laughing my head off at the kids. But this is what I have, what’s given, this whole riotous mix. Right now. If I don’t appreciate this, what will I ever appreciate?When we write, those of us who do that, our hope is to see. Just see. Even if we make up a world, we want to just watch it in action. The more we lean to one side or the other, the more we obscure one eye in favor of the other, the more we lose of what’s there. Of course we filter what we see through our individual consciousness, but that’s part of the mix. Not sure how to talk about this, but it seems that all we can do is see, and that’s enough.