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Refuge

Refuge

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It was not an auspicious way to leave for a beach vacation, pelted by rain, a tornado watch blaring from the radio, wind buffeting the car — but it was what I could salvage of summer when my work was finally done, a few days at the rag-tag end of August.

But ah! It brought me here to the Refuge. Just me and a bag of books, a bike, a bathing suit and towels.

Refuge: a place of safety, a protected place, a sanctuary.

It is what we hope to find at the end of a weary year. Insects humming, surf pounding, gulls crying. But all of these sounds mingling somehow to a dull, peaceful background roar. A place of rest. Active rest, but rest just the same.

Picture Postcard

Picture Postcard

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I am a sucker for the post card shot. The off-center, the too-close, the out-of-kilter — these do nothing for me.

When it comes to landscapes, I have a middle-brow sense of composition. Give me blue skies, puffy clouds (see yesterday’s post), a road winding in the distance, fir trees in the foreground, and I’m happy. Even if there’s a bit of blurring (because, say, the picture was taken out of a car window at 50 miles an hour).

This is a photograph of Glacier National Park, snapped on a vacation there  a few years ago. It made me catch my breath then. It still does.

What We Did on Our Summer Vacations

What We Did on Our Summer Vacations

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As one’s children grow up and out, as friends and boyfriends become a center of gravity, as one’s own career demands make travel difficult, there comes a point — often unknown till it’s past — when the family vacation is over.

This does not mean it will never come again (she tells herself optimistically). But if it comes again it will be in a different form, often atomized (two of us visiting a third) and not all of us together again until people are older and more settled.

So for now, for us, the family vacation season is over and the just-for-two vacation season hasn’t yet begun. It makes me sad to admit this, but I can’t complain. We’ve had a good run. Together we’ve seen much of this country, have sampled Canada and even once ventured across the Atlantic. The glories of the Grand Canyon, Big Sur, Yosemite (where Claire turned 16) and the Maine Coast (where Claire turned 17 — ah, the inconvenience and the privilege of the summer birthday) were all ours to share.

This summer two of us went to Montana, another went to Africa and one is leaving today for the beach. We’ve made quick trips to Kentucky and Indiana. But all together, well, the last trip we all made together was going out to dinner at Reston Town Center. We sat on little chairs and ate our food off short tables. We laughed and talked about the “cougar bar” across the street. It was a good vacation.

Plane Spotting

Plane Spotting

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A walk yesterday along the George Washington Parkway path took me to Gravelly Point, just shy of National Airport. It’s where you go to see jets take off and land. I’ve heard of this place for years but never visited. September 11, 2011, made the sight of low-flying airplanes considerably less palatable for most of us. But once I  put those associations out of mind, it was hard not to be impressed with the power and the presence of the giant birds.

You hear them before you see them — the roar of their engines as they zoom in from the west. But more impressive even than the sound  is the surreal sight of them overhead, creatures of air approaching land. If you spot them when they’re still miles away, you see them dwarfing the Washington Monument, which has been lessened by distance to an insignificant obelisk.

But quicker than seems possible, they are above you, and (if you are an inexperienced amateur photographer with a slow-shooting camera) you’re trying hard to take the picture at just the right moment — when the plane is immediately overhead, blotting out the sky; when you, this puny earthbound human, are spellbound, filled with joy at the improbable sight.

Sometimes you catch it. And sometimes you don’t.

To Be In Benin

To Be In Benin

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Today Suzanne visits the town of Toura, Benin, West Africa, for the first time. It’s in the far north of the country, in the Alibori region near Banikoara and close to an elephant migration route. She’ll be teaching English to middle-school students there for the next two years. It’s the first time a Peace Corps volunteer has served at this school.

The purpose of the visit is to meet people, visit her hut and see what she’ll need to order or buy to make herself at home in Africa.  Then she’ll return to Porto Novo for more language study and training before she starts teaching in September.

One of the big questions on Suzanne’s mind is how far the well pump is from her hut. She’ll have no electricity or running water so this is not an insignificant question. Already I’ve been turning on the tap less often, reusing sudsy water, thinking more about what goes down the drain. There’s no way to ship it to her, of course. It’s purely sympathetic. A futile attempt to be in Benin with her.

When I do a Google image search on Toura, what comes up most are pictures of wells (water portals) like this one. Image: watsanportal.org.

ISO Map

ISO Map

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August 1. A new month. And by any measure, the last month of summer. It hasn’t been much of one for me. All work and little play. No mountains, no shore. The creative juices barely flowing.

I find myself studying maps of the country, looking for the best route to North Dakota. I could go through Chicago into Wisconsin and then up 94 into Minnesota. Or drive straight across Kansas to 29 and follow the Missouri River north.

It’s armchair travel at this point, and the only map I could locate last night showed me just half the country — the eastern half. But there are other maps out there.

Even imaginary adventures require a little graphic inspiration.

Map: Info Please

Red and Blue

Red and Blue

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It’s the middle of the summer, with mountains of work to do and no relief from the heat. My Metro car was offloaded before 7 a.m. to fill the platform at Ballston with even more perspiring bodies clinging valiantly to some semblance of morning cool.

It’s time for . . . a virtual vacation.  What will be, I imagine, the first in a series.

My brother- and sister-in-law are visiting Tom’s cousin Dan and his wife, Ann-Katrin, in Sweden now. So I’m taking myself there today, to their lakeside bungalow with the terraced yard and the charming little guest house in blue and red. To the back porch with the deck chairs and lake view, to the pansies and the pumpkin plants, and, in the distance, the cuckoo bird — the real thing, not our loud clock replica — sounding faintly, faithfully, through the woods.

On a walk from their house the first day there we came across these two boats moored companionably next to each other. I snapped a shot. It’s still one of my favorite pictures.

Benin Bound

Benin Bound

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When we moved to Virginia, Suzanne was a six-month old baby. Today she flies to Benin, West Africa, to begin two-plus years of Peace Corps service. The room into which she’s crammed two decades worth of books and photos, dreams and plans — that room is preternaturally tidy now.

I made myself go in it late yesterday, though I would just as soon have left the door closed. But as she begins her adventure overseas, we begin the adventure of living without her.

It’s what you do as a parent and as a human being, learn to live without the ones you love.  This time the sadness has a fullness to it, though, a sense of life renewing itself. And that makes me grateful for it, in the same way that I’m glad for much-needed rain or the first crisp days of fall.

I don’t know where Suzanne will be stationed in this strange new country. Will it be in the south, near the water, or in the north, near the Sahel? More likely somewhere in the middle.

All I know is that the map of Benin that Suzanne studied for months is now in my possession. I’m the one studying its towns and rivers; I’m the one dreaming about the day when I can visit this faraway place.

 

A Change of Screen

A Change of Screen

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A change of scene is not always possible, so in its place, a change of screen. I choose a photo of a hike we took in the Czech Republic, high above the town of Czesky Krumlov. The Vltava River flows below, out of view in this photograph. And the hills that rise in blue infinity, those are the Sumava Mountains of Bohemia, in the heart of Europe.

When I stare at my computer’s desktop screen now, I remember the breathlessness of that walk, the little shrines we stopped at along the way, the snails that clung to the dew-wet grass, the view that awaited us at the top. Limitless. 

Sleight of Hand

Sleight of Hand

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A month from today Suzanne flies to Benin, West Africa, to begin her Peace Corps assignment. We’ve known about this for months, but now that we’re down to the final weeks it’s becoming more and more a reality. The map of Africa isn’t the only thing swinging into high relief these days. So is the map of parenthood, the map of life even, if that isn’t too melodramatic.

Children are supposed to leave their parents, start lives of their own. This is the natural order of things. I always believed this when I was the child, and I believed it as a parent, too — when my kids were young.  Now I’m having to put my money where my mouth is.

To stave off nervousness I’m concentrating not on how I’ll feel when Suzanne takes off and am trying to imagine how she’ll feel. It’s a parental sleight-of-hand that many of us do unconsciously all the time. It’s why we can smile through our tears.

I remember exactly the way I felt when I walked on the tarmac toward the plane that would fly me to Europe for two months backpacking with friends. I had just turned 20 and my whole life — and Europe! — were ahead of me. I felt like I was bouncing off the pavement. I was floating. That’s the feeling I’ll be trying to conjure up as Suzanne strides toward her future.