Arrival and First Foggy Morning

I had forgotten how early the sun rises up here...4:56. Not only was our bedroom filled with the early morning light, but also a loud chorus of birds began serenading us at that ungodly hour. I woke up and walked downstairs to make my coffee and saw that the lake was shrouded in dense fog. But yesterday evening I managed to take this picture of the view from our deck...

We did make it down the dock to catch our first sunset and while there spotted a rare bird specimen from the north country, the great Maine flamingo...

From four o’clock until ten c’clock Pam and I labored to whip Loon Call Cottage into shape. It needed lots of love. Apparently, the owners have not been here so far this year, and it showed. The deck was a mess, the gas grill is unusable, but thanks to the guys and girls at On The Water In Maine, a new one is on its way today! The inside of the cabin is beautiful but still needed to be Pamercized, all of the adjustments needed to make the place compatible with her sensibilities. This morning it looks much more like home. The deck is now ready for much lounging, coffee drinking, and general Lolly gagging...

Al Fresco dining has been arranged...

This morning’s breakfast will be eaten outside in the fog and in long sleeves. It’s a wonderful thing.

Ok, full disclosure. When we first arrived, I was disappointed in the place. This is our first stay on this lake and in this cabin. It's biggest flaw is that it’s not Loon Landing. But, mostly the place was not ready for us, which was a surprise, not something we are used to with On The Water In Maine. Yes, the inside of the cabin was clean and ready, but the outside was a disaster which I wore a blister on my hands fixing, a result of the strenuous overuse of the sorriest excuse for a broom I have ever had the privilege of working with!

I mean...seriously?

But, this morning the place is looking much more like home. Had our breakfast on the deck then went to the end of the dock and made my first cast of the season and immediately hooked a bass who rose out of the water and shook free of the hook. I’m out of practice! But three or four casts later I caught an 8 inch small mouth, so all is well. Now, awaiting the arrival of Dan the Man from DuckTrap Kayaks with our two rentals for the month. Later, we will attempt to inflate Pam’s SUP for the first time and launch her on her maiden voyage...if the fog will ever life.

We’re finally here, where we’ve wanted to be since we last left. So happy and grateful.

Annnd....we’re off!!

Heading up north in an hour or so. Beyond excited, if for no other reason than to see something that isn’t this house, Short Pump, or my office. I have absolutely nothing against those three places, but enough is enough. Lucy is deeply troubled inside her doggy soul at all the packing, all the frantic preparations going on around her. She has done much apprehensive pacing these past 24 hours, and sleeping with one eye open. Poor girl can sense that this time, she’s not coming with us. Lucky for us, Lucy is a dog, not a cat. Otherwise, she would be permanently scarred, and hold a grudge for years at this betrayal. As it is, she will whine for a while, then be sent into ecstatic spasms of joy when Bernadette arrives this afternoon to be her new best friend for the next month. Dogs are so straight forward. It’s wonderful.

A word about my wife. On a recent run, I tweaked my back a little, so as a precaution I have been moving slower the past couple of days. I do 100% of the driving to Maine and I have a history of back issues. So, Pam has had to pick up some of my slack as we have prepared to leave. Some men like women who are dainty, delicate flowers. I have no problem with that. I get the attraction. But not me. I’ve seen it time and time again over 36 years, my wife is as feminine as it gets, but in crunch time, she is a freaking boss. There’s nothing delicate or flower-like about her when there’s a job to be done. She can out-hustle, out muscle, and out work any five men I know. She is a relentless dynamo when the stakes are highest, the kind of person you want in your foxhole during a crisis. I am in awe of her grit and determination. And I’ve got to tell you...it’s quite sexy!

Ok, wish us luck as we brave the two day, hopefully no more than 14 hour trip. Hope to stay in a Homewood Suites somewhere near Hartford tonight, then head into Maine by tomorrow afternoon.

...Oh, a shoutout to my sweet sister, Paula, who came over for five minutes last night to wish us luck and drop by a couple of gifts for my kids. Paula has always done this sort of thing for Patrick and Kaitlin ever since they were born. Every time they were home on break from college she would always send them back to school with a $20 bill pressed into their hands. She loves them as if they were her own. I come from a family of such people, generous and loyal. Thanks so much, Sis. You know they adore you, right?

My COVID Test Adventure

Today I have a relatively short To-Do list. I’m also very nervous. It’s this way every year on the day before we leave for Maine. I’m walking on eggshells afraid I’ll throw my back out packing up the car or something. Here’s what Pam wrote down for my To-Do list today:

1. Pay last minute bills.

2. Pack up your work computer.

3. Leave compliant away message on your business phone.

4. Cut grass

5. Pack car

6. Do not throw your back out

Just kidding...she didn’t leave me that list. She didn’t have to. She implies number 6 with her intense stare every time I do anything strenuous the day before we leave.

So, yesterday Pam and I went to Patient First to get our much ballyhooed and dreaded COVID tests. Much has been made of how horribly painful the test is what with a six inch long swab jammed up your nose all the way to your freaking brain where it could be doing God knows what. 

We even heard some moron suggest that he wouldn’t ever get a COVID test because it was all a government plot to implant a micro chip in your brain that makes you vote democrat or some such horses**t. Be that as it may, I was still quite apprehensive as we drove up into the parking lot and saw the little white tent. What made my apprehension even more acute was the fact that my wife was in the car. It’s important to my fragile male ego that I not show any weakness in front of her, so my worst nightmare would be throwing some kind of duck-dying fit in front of her as Nurse Ratchet jabs me with the swab, while Pam comports herself with calm grace by comparison. That’s the sort of performance it might be dang near impossible to live down.

So, the instructions were to remain in our vehicle, and present a picture ID when approached by the nurses in the hazmat gear. When they emerged from the tent, I have to admit to much trepidation. They looked like star fighters with their face shields but the talkative one was all business. She didn’t ask for my ID, she just asked me to blow my nose. Her exact quote was, “remove as much snot as possible.” I would have thought there would have been a more technical term for that like mucus...but she played the snot card. Ok. Then she took my temperature with one of those jabber things you place under your tongue. When she first whipped that baby out I thought I was a goner. What?? It’s made out of metal???!!! Then Nurse Ratchet turns to her assistant, Broomhilda, and says, “These people seem nice, lets not use the long probes on them.” Then she proceeds to place a regular looking Q-tip thing up both of my nostrils, swish it around a little, and she was done. Just like that, it was over. No pain, no discomfort, and no fatally embarrassing meltdown. And, as far as I know, no new found admiration for Karl Marx.

But seriously folks. The COVID test was the biggest nothing burger ever, in this, the Age of Nothing Burgers. So, let not your heart be troubled.

My Dad on Race

Woke up at 4:30 this morning. The closer I get to departure day the worse I sleep. I reached over for my phone and saw that my crazy pal from North Carolina (God bless her craziness) had sent me a text: So, for NASCAR I guess no noose is good news! What an awesome way to start your day, am I right?

It was a relief to hear that the whole thing was a misunderstanding/hyper-sensitive overreaction and not an honest to God noose left in a black driver’s garage! I mean, Holy Crap, are there still people out there playing the noose card? So yeah, it’s very good news.

I was thinking about my Dad the other day trying to remember the few times he and I ever talked about race. Dad was born in 1924, grew up in an entirely different era where ideas about race relations were far different than today. Honestly, it wasn’t a topic he enjoyed talking about much. He would talk about it sometimes in his sermons, but not an awful lot, like most people of his time. But I remember once when I was in college asking him what he thought about racism and he told me a story that I have never forgotten.

Dad grew up in the sticks of Buckingham County, Virginia. His Dad, my grandfather worked a farm as a share cropper. One of the other sharecropper families who also farmed for the same landlord was black and had sons my father’s age. Each year when it was time for harvesting, the families shared the combine and worked together. Dad told the story of the first time in his life when he realized what racism was. He said he was about ten years old, maybe twelve. He was working together along with all the other men when it was time for lunch. The first day lunch was served at the black family’s house. The next day lunch was served at his house. Dad said how confused he was when all the black men were served their lunch out in the yard under the shade tree, while all the white men went inside to eat. Dad ate his lunch outside with his friends but remembered feeling a strange sense of guilt. That night he asked his mother this question, “Mom, how come at lunch today my friends had to eat outside while everybody else went inside?” 

My Grandmother was born towards the end of the 19th century, over 120 years ago, and her answer was the best she could do. She looked at him with what my father described as a tired sadness and said, “Emmett, I don’t know why other than to say that’s just the way its always been.” My Dad, ten years old, confronted for the first time with one of life’s many injustices replied, “But, Mom...they worked just as hard as we did in the same hot sun...” 

And that’s where the story ended. No other explanation was offered. It’s just the way it had always been...was the best she could do. My father never forgot that moment because it was the first time he ever remembered understanding the concept of sin, the irrefutable truth that there was a right way and a wrong way, fair and unfair, just and unjust.

My father was no crusader. If he were here to speak for himself he probably would say he should have preached on the topic of racism more than he did...or maybe not. Dad wasn’t a man of many regrets. But for most people, the feeling you get in your stomach when you read of nooses being left in NASCAR garages was the very same feeling that stirred within the heart of my ten year old father under a shade tree in 1934. Some things are forever wrong, for all time.

A Metaphor

The death toll from the Coronavirus in the United States now stands at 120,000. Worldwide the number is fast approaching a half a million. While progress has been made in many states, others are experiencing a resurgence of cases. There is currently no vaccine. But around the world, the scientific community is working around the clock to find one. To that end, the Coronavirus is dominating new research, and gobbling up medical resources and rightfully so since it is killing people all over the world and the only way to stop it ultimately is to find a vaccine.

This doesn’t mean that scientists and researchers no longer care about heart disease or cancer. It doesn't mean that HIV suddenly doesn’t matter or that diabetes is no longer a horrible killer. It’s just that, right now, there’s an emergency, so all hands are on deck to stop the spread of this thing and find a working vaccine. Sure...all diseases matter, but right now, the priority is COVID-19.

I am losing patience with this All Lives Matter foolishness and those who persist in making the argument. 

“Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And yet one of them shall not fall to the ground without your Father seeing. The very hairs of your head are numbered. Fear not, therefore, you are of more value than many sparrows.” Matthew 10: 29-31

Of course, all lives matter. We are all made in the image of God and we have inherent worth and value as human beings. So why is it so hard for so many people to acknowledge that, right now, at this moment in America, it doesn’t seem that black lives matter nearly as much? It in no way diminishes me as a white man to agree that Black Lives Matter. It is just an acknowledgment of the imbalance in the justice system that still, stubbornly persists. It doesn’t mean I have to support every single item on the agenda of the BLM movement. It doesn’t mean that I support the looting and violence that has happened at many protests. All it means is that when I see a police officer with his knee on the throat of a black man for 8 and a half minutes, when I see a black man get murdered for the crime of jogging through a white neighborhood and weeks go by without an arrest, I am agreeing that if Black Lives Mattered MORE, this wouldn’t be happening over and over again, all across the country. That’s all.

So, yes. All diseases matter. We still acknowledge that cancer, heart disease and diabetes are horrible afflictions. But, right now, we’re trying to stop a pandemic, so we will be trying desperately to fix COVID-19 for a while. Is that ok? Are we good?

Nothing To See Here, Move Along, Folks...

This is the week we’ve waited for all year. This is Go Week. Pam has laid out the battle plan...

Now all we have to do is execute.

I’ve got a lot to get buttoned up at the office, last minute things to get wrapped up. Maine is so close now I can taste it. This, being 2020, allows for the opportunity that some last second catastrophe, geo-political earthquake, or meteor attack might come out of nowhere to thwart our plans to leave Short Pump. If it does, this will be me...

So, last night I received FaceTime calls from Patrick and Sarah, Kaitlin and Jon wishing me a happy Father’s Day. These are the four people who make me a father. Of course I share fathering duties with Andy Upchurch and Robert Manchester for my daughter and son in law, but I view both of them as my kids too. That’s the way it works in my family, once you’re in, you’re in all the way, like it or not! The hardest part of being a parent these days is being apart from them. I envy my friends who’s kids all live either in the same city, or at least the same State. They can pop in for dinner, or drop by for lunch. We have to sit close together and stare into a jumpy computer screen at their digital faces. Hugging a laptop leaves a lot to be desired, I’ve learned. But in July we will spend 10 days with Kaitlin and Jon, 7 days with Patrick and Sarah, and 4 glorious days all together in our favorite place in the whole world. There will be great food, much kayaking, swimming and canoeing on the lake, many sunsets to watch from the dock, and fires to sit around while solving all the problems of the world. There will be no Fox News, no CNN, no Drudge Report. If something horrendous (notice the hopeful “if”)happens, the readers of this blog will have to inform me, since we will be unplugged. I will continue to provide dispatches from paradise via The Tempest. 

96 hours and counting.

Tick Tock...

Lucky Enough

Pam went for her normal walk this morning. She starts out with Lucy tagging along, but after a bit of that she drops Lucy back at the house and starts the second, more aggressive part of her walk. She wears ear buds when she walks, usually listening to an audio book. But this morning she had a ton of things on her plate and was especially anxious. My wife is a worrier, a planner, a meticulous organizer, who thinks about things, sometimes to excess. That verse in the Bible that says, Let not your heart be troubled, I am convinced was put in the Bible specifically for her.

Anyway, she gets back from her walk this morning in a decidedly upbeat mood, almost light hearted, a rarity in these days of pandemics and social upheaval. Then she told me her secret, “You know what I listened to on my walk this morning?” I’m trying to think of some Jodi Picoult book when she burst out with, “Christmas music!!!” She has now left the house after spending all day making these treats for her dad...

These are the world famous Molasses crinkles, a staple of the White family...Christmas tradition. Pam made three dozen or more, all the while with Nat King Cole, The Carpenters, James Taylor and Harry Connick Jr streaming through the kitchen speakers. She’s like a different person. Her plan now is to listen to Christmas music until we leave for Maine. It transports me to a different place, makes me think of happier times, makes me concentrate on what’s really important, she explained. Hard to argue with a woman baking cookies.

Oh...and there’s this, perhaps the truest words ever placed on a piece of wood. For us it will be true for six weeks this year...