Summer '24

RACHEL NORTON

“We’re fine,” my husband tells me as I zip the rain flap of our tent closed to protect us from the storm. “We’re lower than the peak below us. If it hits, it will hit that mountain. Really, we’re fine.” 

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Early on in our relationship, when he asked about my adamant refusal to go above treeline during a summer hike, and when my pointing towards the looming clouds on the far horizon wasn’t a sufficient answer, I told him about the two family mountain bike rides we went on when I was a child that turned into desperate downhill races to get to the car (safety) and out of the impending thunderstorm. Both times, while my father was calm on the surface, I could sense his rising unease, the pressure building to get down the mountain. The lightning is approaching—we can’t see it yet, but it’s coming. The tension in the air mimics his tone; it’s almost electric, so close that we are skittering on the edge of a force field. Perhaps this is when I first learned to sense what people won’t, can’t, or aren’t willing to put into words. He is calm, but worried. Protective, but concerned. I internalized not the words, but what I sensed underneath. 

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So, even though I am now an adult and can hear my engineer husband’s calm, rational argument and know the odds of getting hit by a bolt of lightning are 1/15,300, I can’t seem to get my body or my brain to agree. We’re on an island in the middle of a lake; AKA we’re surrounded by water. This can’t be safe, my body says and scrunches itself into a ball in the sleeping bag. There are trees above us. Tall trees, my brain agrees, perfect targets for lightning bolts. I imagine a bolt hitting the tree above us, slicing through its core and sizzling out across the ground in splinters of energy towards us. We’re helpless here. Unable to do a thing. I burrow deeper into my sleeping bag. Futility does nothing to alleviate anxiety. 

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Later that summer, as I’m reading on the dock at our family camp in upstate New York, I see a storm approaching. There have been hints of it coming from the north since earlier in the day; flickers of light in the corner of my eyes, the gentle brush of crisp air ruffling the pages of my book, sudden swirls of cold biting my cheeks. The clouds have been amassing for quite some time now, a gathering of moisture, disturbance, and lifting winds. Even as the sun licks across my bare thighs the atmosphere is changing. There’s an aware anticipation that wasn’t there moments before. Even the lake senses it—impending change—and it soothes itself into calmness and seeps that calmness into the world around it until it’s impossible to go unnoticed.  

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I feel it first as a quiet disturbance in the air, a shifting of matter from one form to another. A single piece of atmosphere that expands and slowly stretches outward to encompass the world around it—nothing goes un-embraced. 

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The change swooshes over my chair and ripples out across the lake. It requires attention, this ripple; a demand. Look, it says, look. And I do. 

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I’ll head inside once the island across the way is no longer visible. Its invisibility is the first sign of the storm’s arrival; when the storm’s front line has consumed it, transforming a landmark into a mark without land. It’s a strange thing, what storms can do—transform known landscapes into unknown spaces. I know the island exists, but the storm, for minutes or hours, thrusts its existence into question. If we cannot see it, does it exist? Yes. Existence and non-existence are not opposites. Mutual exclusivity does not apply here. 

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It’s inevitable, the swallowing of the island. It’s obscuring. This storm does not shy from the inevitable, but embraces it. I watch as the clouds shed their soft edges. Sharp edges, sharp rain, sharp lightning emerge and slice the landscape—their emergence is not gentle. And with that slice comes wind. Its first gentle push barely reaches me before I see the white caps form across the bay, ripples blown into broken crests. The fierce gusts push the water forward, engulfing the dock and letting it free with each surge and break of the waves. I feel the soft touch of rain on my face as the island disappears from view. I’m not worried; I can see it approaching. 

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“Why, exactly, are we turning the Adirondack chairs over?” my husband asks through the rain and wind as he helps me flip over the four green chairs we have on the dock so that they are upside down, backs to the wind. I pause, stumped. I have no answer, it’s just what my family does. There are steps we take to prepare for storms—they are written into our bones, passed down from grandfather to father, father to daughter. Flip the Adirondack chairs over; cover the motorboat; ensure the boats are secure; take the clothes off the line; find the leaks in the roof and place the basins underneath them; settle in and watch the fierce edge of the storm roll in. These are our rites, our customs; how we prepare for storms. Tradition, rooted in the word tradere, means “to transmit, to hand over, to give for safekeeping.” I don’t know how many hands have passed these steps forward, handed them over, but they are many.

Built in 1883, our lake house tilts slightly to the side, the weight of years slowly bending it toward the ground; a stooped grandparent leaning on a cane. Wooden stairs worn down to a polished deep mahogany by the feet of littles running and big ones walking and then shuffling across time wind their way to an attic that holds amongst other things an old baby carriage, windsurfing sails from the 1970s, plastic noodles, water skis, life jackets, boxes, and the secrets of generations past. The door to the toy closet (and the armoire, where the plates are stacked) is lined with the heights of the extended family growing through time. I can see my great-great-grandfather’s height when he was twelve, my grandfather’s height at eight, my Dad’s when he was four, my triplet brother’s and sister’s when we were ten (yes, I was still taller than my brother then), my cousin’s height, uncle’s height, my niece’s height.  

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This house is made of family and family made this house. My dad’s college books fill the bookshelves in the living room and dining room. The chairs my grandmother last caned are still in use on the porch. The coffee maker is brand new, courtesy of my cousin, while the bedding and pillows have slowly made their way from the 1800s to the 2020s thanks to my cousin-in-law. My siblings and I know all the best hide outs for a game of kick-the-can; we know the exact way my grandfather liked to trim the trees, the “mad-cutter” once again at it; we know the afternoons when my dad will “read” (nap) in the hammock; we intimately know the rocky path down to the lake (each stone marks our bare feet with its uniqueness— a smooth stone there, slightly curved and angled there, a steep angled rock there, a step over a giant root, a slight right turn and then a leap to the dock); we know the way to knot a rope and rig a sailboat; we know where the dock spiders are and where the poison ivy lurks; we know the way.  

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There’s a green bench on “the point”—a rocky outcropping that juts out away from the path and over the lake—that provides a focal point for the lake, the storm, and our family. There are a multitude of photographs of that green bench we’ve taken over the years; different  configurations of family seated side by side. I flip through them in my mind:

My grandfather with his arm over my shoulder. 

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My sister and I, college-aged, standing and peering out at the lake.

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The three of us (my brother, my sister, and I), seated like squirrels on a branch, unwilling to peel ourselves away from the lake to get in the car to head home to Colorado.

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My dad and I on my wedding day; my husband and I on our wedding day.

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My sister and I whispering secrets to my one-year-old niece. 

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I rewind the scenes backward in my mind, each configuration of family disappearing as I move toward the past. Each generation ghosts past me. There I see my father, young with a riot of hair and a wide grin laughing with his siblings and his friends from down the lake. As they disappear over the hill, my grandfather emerges, a grinning boy in sepia with a crew cut and knee-high socks, roughhousing with his brother. His mother steps out onto the porch as I see my grandfather scamper around the corner. She walks down toward the lake to greet her father, who, in turn, raises his hand to his father who is out on the lake fishing. And so each greeting goes, the land shifting, the porch disappearing until there is no house and there is no bench. All that’s left is a pile of rock jutting out over a lake created by the retreat of glaciers. And then there are slipping faults pulled back into place and continental plates extricating themselves from collision, and then all there is is an ocean, stretching out, a swath of blue under which the future lays buried. There is history here. And there is family embedded into the very rock of this place. I am embedded into the very rock of this place.

The wind is steady, pushing the lake in giant splashes onto the dock now. The hard edge of the storm is almost upon us. The mountains on the other side of the lake are hidden now too, obscured by the wall of approaching rain. There’s a smell particular to this type of storm, what emerges from the clash of sun and rain, heat and cold. It surrounds us now, mixing with the pine and dirt. We can feel the storm approaching when we’re sitting inside the house, but it’s only visible through a space amongst the trees when we stand on a bench to peer out. Through this vantage point, we can see its fierce edge storming across the lake, violent yet gentle in its approach. The sound starts next, the gentle peppering of rain on the roof, water into metal basins. A bolt of lightning splits the gray clouds above us.

I’m not worried. We’re protected by the walls surrounding us. It’s astonishing how simple two-by-fours and a screen stretched between them can provide us with security, a sense of protection. Or maybe it’s what these walls hold: light, family, laughter, hands holding hands holding hands holding hands, and a door scattered with the names of those who came before us with space for those who come after.

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I know my husband thinks this fear of lightning is misplaced; thinks most of my fears are misplaced. He does not understand this beast though. It is not passive—carried along by an unknown placer “is misplaced.” It is active. It is the one doing the misplacing. 

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I do not recognize myself at times. The anxiety obscures. I used to be fun, I think, when I decline going backcountry skiing with my husband even though the avalanche risk is low. What did I used to think about before my “all eventualities” checklist took over? I wonder as I rifle through the options in my head when I see smoke from a wildfire blowing across the ocean from our vantage point on a beach during a vacation. If A, then B. If B, then C. Where can we evacuate to if needed? How will we evacuate without a car? Do we try to get on a ferry and head out to sea? How does the city warn the thousands of tourists currently carousing at bars; exploring; already sleeping? I used to be calm, I think, when a car speeding past us (too closely) adrenaline shoots across my body, startling me into taut awareness. I remember being able to sleep, I tell myself in yearning as I practice box breathing to counteract the thoughts of loved ones at risk or a longing I can’t quite name. Travel used to be a joy, as I dutifully swallow a pill an hour before each flight to counteract the angst that now accompanies me on every flight. Was I ever light? Was I ever not so worn down? On edge? I can’t remember. I think I’ve lost myself somewhere. 

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* 

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“You’re not here,” my husband says.

“Hmm?” I drag my attention away from the smoke rising over the beach. It’s good it’s a light gray, I tell myself, it means no buildings have been consumed yet. That’s when the smoke burns dark.

“You’re not here,” he repeats.

I shake my head in confusion. But I am. I can feel the earth beneath me and the air around me. 

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“You’re not,” he insists. “You’ve gone somewhere else.” 

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He’s right, I suppose. I am like the island on the lake: existing, but hidden behind a storm. 

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How plentiful these contradictory but true realities are. Black and white are no longer two distinct colors for me but so close the line between them is indistinguishable. All I see is a wash of gray. These indistinguishable but present lines are everywhere nowadays. Before taking a pregnancy test I am both pregnant and not pregnant (my body knows more than my brain). The same goes for the 8-week prenatal ultrasound—I am both pregnant and not pregnant at the same time (my body knows more than my brain). When under anesthesia to undergo a dilation and curettage after the silent miscarriage, a piece of me is now apart from me yet somehow still a part of me. 

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My friend’s son dislocated his shoulder a few years ago. I think about this sometimes, the separation of the limb from the joint and its relocation back into place. Dislocation, from dislocacioun: "displacement of parts," “originally of bones of the limbs,” “out of place.” Relocation, then, is coming back to place. I imagine there must be something missing from either the limb or the joint though. With the first tear of the bone from the socket and the subsequent pummeling of bone against muscle and tissue, I imagine how battered that space must feel and what the bone has lost in its dislocation—the minute bits of muscle, tissue, collagen, and minerals that evaporated when the bone first parted from its socket. There is no way to reclaim those pieces. So, it’s looser when it returns to the socket; it’s not quite as secure as it was once in its place, in its attachment to source. But it is home.

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When I think of home, I think of the tilted house at the lake where we enact the actions of generations before us without thought, continuing a long line of ancestral traditions that remain unbroken. Tradition, rooted in the word tradere: “to transmit, to hand over, to give for safekeeping.” I wonder… if there’s no one to handle the origins, to cherish and safeguard each action, what happens to those traditions we hold dear? Without someone to do the carrying and the labor, to transmit it into the future, the tradition might wither in our hands, like dirt eroding until what’s left is a Rosetta stone without a key. 

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They say if you grasp anything too tight, you risk it breaking. Does this hold true for expected futures? And what happens when it breaks? Where do the leftover pieces go? My grandfather used to have a splinter kit on hand, ready to exorcize the embedded slivers from our feet or hands whenever we ran too hard or slid too fast on the jagged edges of the dock. He’s no longer here, though, to grasp them with steady hands, and draw them out. I wonder how long something can stay embedded before it gets infected.

*

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There’s a tree in our backyard at the lake that bears a jagged lightning scar. Its bark was flayed off from the force of the lightning bolt, revealing the tree’s soft inner core, its heartwood. It’s hard to see the heartwood of a tree while it still stands, so there is something precious in this breaking, in the viewing of the tree’s vulnerable inner core. 

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The tendency is to want to fix something. Clean it up. Repair it to whole. The Japanese art of Kintsugi uses gold to bind the fragments of broken ceramic vessels together, rebuilding what was into its former self but with the cracks highlighted, the fragments outlined. It is whole, but we can see where it was broken.

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Looking at this tree now, I can see what would happen if we were to forego the golden dust and let the pieces lay as they may—their rough edges showing, the gaps between pieces obvious. Scattered across the forest floor they form a different type of art—Mural: A piece unmade/ Mural: A piece remade—. Gold is not needed to fill these ragged edges or gaps, for without those broken edges I would not see the beauty of what they touch. I would not see the heartwood of this tree. 

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Looking up at the tree I realize I've forgotten what it means that we can still see it in the woods. 

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It’s still standing, even after the lightning split it apart. 

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I lean closer and I think I can hear it whisper above the storm, I’m here. I’m here, I’m here, I’m here. 

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