Neebish Island Day 1

Thursday, July 18^th, 2013

The sun sets on Neebish Island at 9 PM.  It is dark now.  Outside my window, lightening flashes, a lighthouse sends one clear beam of light into the Saint Mary’s river to help the 1000-foot long freight ships navigate through the red and green buoys in the river.  Just below my windows the water laps onto the shore, my room hangs out over the water.  The bull rushes poke through the surface of the river reminding me of the prized fishing spot “the weeds” where locals like Mr. Koeger tell us you can still catch pike.  I grew up coming to this boathouse turned four-bedroom cabin, as did my mother, and her mother, and her mother, and her mother.  My son, Santiago Brach Lovejoy represents the sixth generation inhabiting this cabin.  All of us have spent the summers, like my five-year-old niece did today, fishing for pike.  Lying here in the room where I can still remember Great Grandma Maggie sewing all of her own clothes in and Great Grandpa William paying the bills from I look at a rack of eight fishing poles.  When I was my niece Sienna’s age, just five-years-old, each day was marked by a fishing trip with to the “weeds” or some other local fishing hole with Great Grandma and Grandpa Lovejoy on their 20-foot-fishing boat lined with olive green vinyl seats.  If I listen between the drops of rain hitting the window, and water lapping against the shore, I can still hear Maggie’s voice yelling “Biiiilly, come here.” 

One of Grandma Lovejoy's landscape paintings, like the oil painting in my mom’s living room hangs on the wall upstairs along with two family portraits of the Meyers when I was less than nine-years old.  My great grandmother didn’t go to high school but was an expert landscape oil painter, seamstress, cook, and fisherwoman extraordinaire.  Likely an Enneagram eight, she ran this house like tugboat Annie.  This week five of her great-great grandchildren, Sienna, Mack, Phoenix, Atlas, and Santiago have all come to see their grandmother and great grandmother on Neebish island, these children created memories similar to those my siblings Julie, Kari, Brent and I made growing up—canoeing in the river, fishing in the weeds, and taking day trips to Mackinac island for history and fudge.

Ill sign off here with a picture of Santi, Kelly, and I catching the Neebish Island ferry with a 1000 foot freighter passing behind us as it slides through the narrow St. Mary's passageway.