A Small Cup of Chowdah, Please

Two alone with a licorice nib of a dog, furry and sweet.  The darkness provides excellent cover for a surreptitious sneak into the beach but the licorice nib barks just as the attendant waves us in with a reminder that the beach closes at midnight. Shamefaced, we hang a left and drove out before we are handcuffed to the outdoor showers, two alone with a licorice nib.

No matter, here.  There are many other stretches of sand and water  lit by an almost full moon, a moon that graced our long drive like a  flashlight beacon trained on a backdrop sky  at the fifth grade play. This weekend we play gadabouts and pretend we've joined the circus, or at least the Coast Guard.

Enough weekends of  serving platters of fruit and cheeses; this weekend, the only glasses we raise are to ourselves and it is sweet. The cottage awaits, set for the next act and we never fail to smile when we turn the key in the rusty lock and apply brute shoulder force to a swollen door and let in the fresh piney briney air.

White curtains float on a sea of blue and polka dots dance in the next room. Is it really ours? It seems it is so long as we make the payments. And suddenly, this morning, it was summer! No, I mean really, really summer, here, like 25 years of summer rushing up to meet us at the rotary.

I am bobbing in a small red kayak. My vest is school bus yellow and from it hangs an orange whistle. Oars breach water with a splash and I hug the coastline, a timid little paddler for the first time out. Surely anyone could hear my voice, whistles notwithstanding.

The tiger lilies waited for me; the weeds have laid out the welcome carpet! I itch to dig my fingers into pots and create vistas of pink geraniums and variegated vinca, to line my paths with bobbing heads of buddelia and mops of blue hydrangeas. But they wait patiently at home for me, spread lavender across the walk to give me a reason to return to my little brown house and plug in the fairy lights and sit with my girls in the evening and trade stories of toddlers crying and clients missing and disasters on the loading dock.

But for now, we are adrift in a sea of summer. A little red plastic boat points the way across the cove and if I could ever figure out how to get it back up on the car, I'd be there now, while Mr. Pom snores in the bedroom and the licorice nib pants on the wood floor. It is a long road home, both by car and of the spirit. Here on our knoll, we float in and out of reveries, pick up books that lay open on our laps, watch the birds flit from roof to limbs,  swat the skeeters, search for the pantry shelf for that last piece of salted caramel, and plan tomorrow's breakfast: cantaloupe and proscuitto with a side of toasted marshmallows, a hot dog with sauerkraut, and cinnamon rolls from Fancy's.