Neebish Island 2017: Seven Breaths

8 AM Sunday Morning, July 2^nd.

I am half way through my summer vacation on Neebish Island with my mother, grandmother, and two small kids. I can handle putting them down for naps and bedtime as well as three meals a day with my mom’s help.   I can do the laundry by hand with the kids.  I can even attempt to burn the garbage and sort the food for composting, but having the stamina to hold the band together for 18 hours a day really depends on me having just a window, even a 30-minute window of time for myself in the morning to do yoga, meditate, or write.

On the island, I mostly feel like Laura Ingalls, living on the homestead.  Everyone works around the house.  I even spent the day picking up 100 goose poop droppings that spread out like a cancer across our waterfront lawn.  I used a children’s hoe, a Frozen beach shovel and a metal can.  I thought about Pa waking up in the mornings and feeding the horses or pulling weeds and decided it could be fun for three weeks to live like the Amish.  My mother’s sister (Aunt Linda) and brother-in-law (Uncle Steve) came up with their son for a night and they worked a lot on the property—mowing the lawn, cutting down weeds, taking the canoe and row boat out of the boathouses, getting the 6/hp motor set up while Karin cooked and I entertained the kids in with insects, lures, and casting lines. 

There is a tool shed here that would likely make any man weep with joy.  The men who man it have been gathering random wires, nuts, fishing poles, and dozens of saws/wrenches/screwdrivers for 100 years--literally.  My grandma’s last boyfriend, Keith, who she picked up at the Wednesday night Euchre card game after Keith’s wife had died on the island, really fixed it up.  All the odds and ends, like 10,000 nails and screws are in a cabinet, kept in little milk jars-the olden days kind that might of held a pint.  I can remember my Great Grandpa William Lovejoy cleaning the perch we caught up there for dinner.  He was born in 1900.  This morning, I am going to ask my Aunt to give me the basic outline of the history of this place.  I always think I should write more of it down.  Frame it.  Input it in Ancestry.com.

The two best pictures around here are two black and whites.  The first is of my living Grandmother—Doris Behling and her mother Maggie Lovejoy when Doris was three-years-old, 87 years ago.  Here she is on one of their first trips to the island in the early days of the car in 1929 with her mother, Maggie Lovejoy.  The second is of Doris, now 30-years-old or so, with four of her five kids.  Can you find my mom?  Her mother Maggie Lovejoy is there next to her.

If I could figure out how, I would frame get copies of these photos and frame them for our wall of fame in DC.

36-year-old cousin Lawrence, Aunt Linda and Steve’s son came up for the night.  We took the kids on canoe rides.  Zadie was captivated and she hollered, “Faster, faster,” “Can I hang my feet in the water?” or “Look the moon!” pointing up to what has moved from a quarter moon to a half moon.  Santi on the other hand, just said, “Keep paddling, keep your paddle in the water, don’t look at the moon, take me back to the beach.  We are sinking!!!”  These two cherubs couldn’t be more different.

I thought Saturday was the best day to get a big fix of our favorite card games.  The adults played cribbage and Euchre all day.  My grandmother is by far the most able card shark.  She can’t remember what trump is.  Or even really wrap her head around how the high to low card is re-ordered in Euchre depending on what trump is, but she wins every game.  As you would expect, I partner with her whenever I can.  My mother and Aunt taught Santi to play “Go-Fish” and “Concentration.”  I am not sure what is more adorable, watching him cast his fishing line or hold three cards in his hand and ask, “Do you have a two?”

I have listened to more hysterical, inflammatory, propaganda about religious liberties and how schools don’t teach American history anymore as all the liberals just set out to make citizens of the world this week on Fox news than I have in my entire lifetime.  The Wall Street Journal, which I read cover to cover every day in paper form is palatable.  But Fox news should be unplugged and censored for the long term damage it is causing people like my mother and grandmother. If you want to understand the Right’s hatred of Obama and Clinton spend an hour with it, if you can stand it.  My high of one of these days was when Clinton came on Fox and Santi jumped up and down yelling enthusiastically, “Look mom, it is Hillary Clinton!”  All night long, my grandmother listens to right-wing talk radio.  I asked her to turn it down last night so I could meditate to the fireworks.  It is hard to find your breath when a radio host is explaining why we shouldn’t complain about how Trump treats women as Kennedy was no better. 

We have found common ground at each meal when Zadie proudly says after we start eating, “But we didn’t take seven breaths!”  Confused as to how a meal can start without holding hands and pausing to take in the moment.  We invite our relatives who pray to pray, we breathe, and everyone enjoys a 15 seconds of peace.  Seems like the right thing to do to honor the Fourth of July.

Peace from the island.