As we tip into a new year, I always search my calendar for the totemic moment of the past year, scanning the months for the signature image. For me, now approaching 70, this captures it all. Twilight comes early in late August, the end of an unseasonably hot day. Perched at the end of a weathered grey dock, reclining in a lipstick-red wooden chair, feet up on a matching ottoman, I am considering the curious circumstances of my solitude.
Later, there were sunset cruises with boatloads of tall boys and their girlfriends, bottles of beer nestling in the cooler. More popcorn, loud music, more laughter. Still later, there was a man who held my hand on another dock two thousand miles away, who poured me wine at sunset and took me fishing for pickerel, kissing me when I caught a big one. And even more recently, there was a woman, lean and muscular, who led me by the hand into a moonlit pool to skinnydip under a Western sky. Now, they’re all gone: the little boys, the big boys, the man, and yes, the woman. Tonight, it’s just me and my dog, waiting in silence for the heron to emerge. Wondering in this liminal moment: what comes next? If my dad were here, he’d tell me I am sitting on the exposed basement of the continent, remnants of an ancient mountain chain-- rock that has weathered more than 450 million years of erosion. My dad talked like that, math being his first language: it put him at ease. With little or no prodding, he’d pull out his blue pencil, whittled sharp with his trusty pen knife, and launch into a short history of the world. Seas, he’d tell me, once flooded where I now sit. At the bottom of those seas, sediment gathered, morphing into rock—rock older than the stars above. Eventually, glaciers— two miles thick—exposed that bedrock, our beloved pre-Cambrian shield. Glacier melt waters stabilized and formed lakes like this one, a place I call home. For him, it was easier to talk of evolution than of love or damn near anything else. Certainly easier than addressing my mother’s chronic drinking, or his own, for that matter.
Curious—at least—to me.
I am alone, but for the dog at my feet, peering out as I do: past the loon swimming solo in the silky black water, across to a single white pine standing resolute, cresting a warm hulk of pre-Cambrian granite. I love the tree and its bonsai beauty. I love the gray rock that grounds it. I love it here. We are waiting—or at least I am--for the sleek blue heron to make its end-of-day appearance. Any minute now, it will swoop in slow motion from the opposite shore to mine, skimming low over the water with one prehistoric squawk, signaling that day is done. For more than 40 years, I have made the sunset trek to the far end of this dock. Tonight, the sky is merled: purple, pink, and mauve. If my son were here, he might be painting it. But he’s long gone, nesting with his wife and baby daughter in L.A.
Sitting here alone: this is brand new.
In other years, there was no time. Then, there were bright orange life jackets to buckle up over skinny boy bodies, sharp young voices yelling, “Hit it!” Wakeboards rising triumphant in golden light behind the ancient boat. Laughter. Flannel pyjamas. Popcorn, marshmallows, movies.
HOLA SOBER | MADRID
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