Flying Back from Swan Lake
posted at 2:22 am
on Sep. 9, 2010
Previous entry:
How to Take a Shower
Next entry:
Out and Aboot on My Birthday
The long weekend with my father went well. Conversations, TV, the lake and small chores filled the days.
I slept in the little cabin, the one outside the main house, it gives the best sleeps of your life. It’s a quiet oasis, a sensory deprivation tank without the hassle of soaking in luke warm water.
I felt so at home there—like I belonged—enough of a sense of it being my home that I rearranged the furniture in the guest cabin without a qualm, cleaning up random bits of cabin gear, like sweat pants, life jackets, an old carpet, tie downs, making it tidy and calm to give it an even more homey feel.
Later, though I felt guilty because I saw how he knows where everything is, and the tent I put in the cupboard is going to be hard to find.
All of our meals were in town; I feel like I should have offered to cook, but it was nice not having to, either. Tins of snack nuts were everywhere. Nicole and I bought hummus on the drive in from the airport, which tided me over after a bit of exercise before dinner later that weekend.
I went kayaking twice, and would have done more and longer, if it wasn’t for windy conditions on the lake. I was sad that Nicole and I didn’t get a chance to go together; she brought hers all the way from the park, but she wasn’t at Swan for very long, and seemed half-way between places, still in work mode half the time. I was glad for the chance to be there with her.
The night before I left, Dad and I sat up until 2 a.m., watching Fox News, neither one of us wanting to go to bed first.
After three days, though, he started telling some of the same stories over again; it’s inevitable when we don’t know that much about the people in each others’ life. I would credit that to age, too, except I did it also, on the drive into Kalispell to visit the Best Buy so we could get a new power supply for his eMachine computer. I was telling an anecdote, and then, pow, there you are, half way through a story about airport security thinking, hey, wait, I *know* I told this before—but anyway it’s still funny.
Both my parents are older now, older than they were, and it’s funny and wrong, because I mostly don’t feel older at all when I’m with them. I still feel 17, I still look down the beach to Birch Glen lodges for my teenaged friends sitting aorund a bonfire, when really it would be my friends’ kids out there now.
There was less tension this visit—never none, there wasn’t ever none from the time I was old enough to know better and argue and have my own feet under me—but generally good feelings and a warmth that I reciprocated.
I want to go back soon.
