The Direction of Intention

I do not take for granted that I live a few short blocks from Lake Michigan. It is a powerful presence with wildly changeable moods. Sometimes I lay awake at night and listen to the boom: the sound of the waves pounding the shore. Sometimes I stand on the rock wall marveling that it is glassy, barely moving. Some days, if you didn’t know better, you’d swear you were staring into the Atlantic Ocean. Lake Michigan is a shape-shifter. A trickster.

We used to walk the shore almost everyday. We’d circle the marina and, sometimes, we’d go further. To the band shell. Once we walked to the college. When the pandemic came, we moved our walks to the woods. Actually, we regularly walked the paths of Des Plains or Bristol Wood but since we encountered less people on the wooded paths, we stopped walking the lake altogether. Everything, even our walk-location-choices, were pressed through the weird calculus necessitated by COVID. They still are.

20 likes to tease Kerri. He knows that the assertion that “It’s cooler by the lake,” will be met by her New York style push back. She’s a detail girl so blanket assertions are always met by contrary statements, “It’s not ALWAYS cooler by the lake!” she counters, her Long Island indignation rising. 20 looks to me and asks, ” How do you live with this?” My standard answer is: “It’s why I drink.” She pinches his arm as if he was responsible for my answer, he feigns ferocious pain. We laugh. They are siblings by choice.

Like much of the country our temperatures have been too-hot-too-soon. After dinner, we decided to take a walk around the neighborhood. “Look at the fog!” Kerri exclaimed. It was rolling in, houses a few blocks away were disappearing like Avalon into the mist. We walked toward it, into it, and were immediately cooler. While Kerri took photos I turned to the west, the lake lapping at my back, and watched the sunset color the fog.

The foghorn began to call. The lake literally disappeared from sight. Orange and red fingers reached across the sky. “It’s magic,” I said.

“It’s also cooler,” Kerri smiled, “But don’t tell 20.”

read Kerri’s blog post about COOLER BY THE LAKE

Filed under: Family, Gratitude, Love, Merely A Thought Monday | Tagged: 20, avalon, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Gratitude, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, lake effect, lake michigan, magic, shape shifter, story, studio melange, Trickster, walking, walks |