#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream
We've been looking forward to finding a favorite beach toy, a buoy, washed ashore, for Charlie to swim and fetch, and this morning we did. We made a long, lingering, playful journey over the rocks this morning at low tide.
Even as I walked in the soft air of the seashore of Vineyard Sound, I began to feel the rumblings of a poem about a freshwater lake, inspired by some recent texts exchanged between my sisters, brothers and myself, about missing our parents, particularly, on these summer days which bring back memories of time spent at Laurel Lake in New Hampshire. Switching on my voice recorder of my cell phone, I took notes of the spontaneous outpouring of ideas. Then, I kept walking, in silence, and realized I was feeling as if I might weep. But, it was more than sentimentality. It was a recognition of how deeply happy childhood memories anchor relationships, family values, and the human spirit.
My grandparents, my mother's parents, Clarence and Marguerite, brought their five children to summer on Laurel Lake in Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire, a few miles from Mount Monadnock, for the first time in the 1930's. They would return and return, and bring their spouses and children, and always, to the little strip of sand, Sandy Beach, in the Pine Grove, filled with family, and the docks, by the rocks, in view of the beach, filled with family too. Our summer joy, our summer bliss, belonged to Laurel Lake. Although he's not writing specifically about "our" Laurel Lake, my brother and I love this classic essay by E.B. White, Once More to the Lake, about the ritual of return to a beloved childhood haunt:
White's essay - and the recent texts between my brothers and sisters - will be on my mind and in my heart when I transcribe my notes for a draft of my poem.
All photos and text copyright Kelly DuMar 2017 unless otherwise attributed