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Reprinted with permission from Minnesota Monthly magazine. | ||||||
 | | Your roof leaks. The pump is out. Your telephone doesn't work. Your yellow croquet ball is missing forever. I'm sorry to say. I'm sorry we used all the toilet paper. There are a lot of nonpoisonous leaves out in the woods, which probably would be easier to find in the dark if we hadn't lost your flashlight. I'm sorry about the duct tape on the bottom of the boat. Don't peel it up. There's half a peanut butter sandwich stuck behind the bunkbeds in the boathouse. And some watermelon rinds. Somewhere. I'm sorry. I'm sorry about the wasps in the bathroom and the snake, if you find it. I'm sorry about the holes in the lids of your canning jars. But the beetles had to breathe. I'm sorry about the fingerprints on the picture window. I'm sorry about the sand in the sheets. I'm sorry your clothespins got wet. It rained. I'm sorry it rained. I'm sorry I didn't fix your roof, your pump, or your phone. I didn't wash the picture window. I didn't sweep behind the end table. I didn't floss my teeth. But there were whitecaps. The lake was sea green; the waves flecked with silver. And one morning Misha called to me to see the top of the spruce "covered in snow." Looking up I saw it too, shimmering and so bright as to be winking. My wiser, older eye deduced that it was not snow we saw, but pinecones. Solid silver pinecones. And one evening when the sun had just gone, and the lake wore a faded color like a negligee, bugs came and sacrificed themselves. I saw them plunge into the water, flap one wing, and then disappear as if by magic, devoured by unseen fish. I spent a great deal of time trying to see into that dark water to see those fish, but I couldn't. It was like magic, the dark liquid, the silvery rings around the bug, the pop of the unseen fish's head-and poof-the bug was gone. We left some leeches in the fridge. I forget which container. The hole in the garden was made by our dog. Were those lady's slippers? I did try to stick them back in, and we did whack around in the poison ivy looking for the lost croquet ball. We did, we really did, and then we quit, because we couldn't find it and because the wind was sighing in the trees, calling out names which we listened to in case we knew any of them. You said you had a canoe, right? We never could find it. But we used the paddles to drive the bats out of the cabin. I guess the flue was open on the chimney. Which might explain the mosquitoes. Or maybe they got in when the bear ripped out the screen in the kitchen window. He didn't do too much damage. But he had a taste for sugar-sweetened cereal. And sugar, for that matter. Maybe that explains the grit in the sheets. I'm sorry I didn't change the sheets. But there were fairies! Hundreds of them - clinging to the cedars, drying their iridescent wings, considering whether to dust or vacuum or make the beds first, then giving it all up to test their wings over the open water. It's true, they looked like dragonflies when you got up close. "But that might just be a disguise," Misha pointed out. Which seemed reasonable in this place where the fish are invisible, and snow tops the spruce trees in July, and gold lies molten on the water. And where, after one week, we are luminescent as fireflies. Sun seeps out our pores. Our hair gives off sparks. Loon calls rattle around inside us. In fact, we are nothing but frog calls and birdsong and waves rolling the stones on the beach and wind pushing the leaves on the trees. We are soaked, saturated, drenched, steeped, infused with the magic of the place. And oh, by the way, the lawn mower's broken and the toilet's backed up. Maybe we can stay again next summer? MM Margi Preus is a Duluth writer. Her short story Some Kind of Dive appeared in the March 1997 issue of Minnesota Monthly. | ||||
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