Trinity Lake - Day 7 - Morning

 

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,

All good children go to heaven.
A penny on the water,
twopence on the sea,
Threepence on the railway, and out goes she.

-British nursery rhyme


A restless night.
Somehow, here on the cliff, my head is crowded with memories.

First  -  Ginny.
         
Impossible not to think of, to dream of, Ginny in this place.
I can picture her as clearly as if it she were now standing on the edge of the cliff in front of me.
Ginny.
Bud's sister.

My sister-in-law.
It made her a part of me - and an influence over me for nearly five decades.
Her unwavering love.
Ginny, retired United Church minister, (a very difficult thing for her Catholic parents to accept), still with Margie, (retired high school principal), living in an Old Toronto east end house where they have lived, ever since their move from the ramshackle house on Earl Street, nearly forty years ago.
The two of them, a loving couple, and still close friends and neighbours with my eldest brother, Arthur and his wife Jem.

Aunts to Arthur and Jem's kids.

The Cliff was absolutely a Ginny place.

Next - Bud.

My husband of thirty-five years, most of which had been happy, been together.
But not all.
Bud.
Bud had his BSc, and having then gone to trade school to become an electrician, had worked as a contractor and house builder for most of our married life. We had bought land near the town of Haliburton in the mid '80s, and built the house where we still live, less than an hour's drive from Trinity Lake.
The cliff, having only been there once, was not a spot that drew him.

And me.

Working at my art. Doing a bit of writing,
Having taught high school art for nineteen years, I had given up teaching to work at my art,

to finally create the body of work that I had thought about 

all these years.

My parents, 

gone now for many years. My mother died suddenly of a stroke the year after Bud and I were first together. My father lived to seventy-five, spending as much time as he could at the cottage with one or another of his offspring and their families.
He had his books, his pipe, his canoe to the end.
The cottage was sold after my father died. It had become one cottage in a crowd of cottages along the West Bay shoreline. West Bay on the weekends was now filled with motorboats and water toys, not as it was in our earliest memories, 

not what either I or my brothers wanted in a cottage any more.

I see my brothers occasionally, at least the ones in Ontario, and about every five years or so we all manage to gather - weddings, anniversaries, reunions - siblings, spouses, kids, grands.
Ginny and Margie too - part of the family.

Ginny and Bud's parents still going strong in the old Windsor house. It was a bit of a sadness for them that they had no grandchildren. I had had a hysterectomy at a relatively young age, which Bud and I had accepted with equanimity. 

It was just the way it was.

We needed to visit them soon.

And Camp Trident.

Chip, Jessie, and all of the friends made there, the faces that I see in my dreams from time to time, the names that pop into my head for no apparent reason.

The old camp, no longer in operation, but still a part of me.
Still so much a part of me.

The lake, the canoe routes, every rocky portage, familiar.

The Cliff, prominent in my dreams for nearly fifty years.

I think of Willie almost daily. 

His words of wisdom, the intonation of his voice, his long, often rambling lectures after meals, leaving the campers figiting, the councellors half-listening, gazing out the large south-facing dininghall windows to the waters of Trinity Lake.

But still, his musings on life have shaped me.

His words, a part of me, with me still.

Finally - Wren.

Not as happy a story to tell.


                                               *


I boil some tea water, and looking out toward the cliff, drink this with half a pita and a piece of cheese.
Enough.
It is a still warm morning.

I draw from this spot as my memories tumble and churn.

When I'm satisfied with what I have drawn, I carry my journal and drawing pens up to the cliff.
It is ridiculous, but my heart is pounding as I make my way along the rocky edge.
I sit, forcing myself to the very edge, my legs hanging over. With a trembling hand, I begin, gazing at the outlook over the bay, from the cliff's very edge.
I adjust my thoughts.

The panic ebbs away.

I draw.
I think of the little silver cross, lost on Ginny's jump from this spot so many years ago, now somewhere at the bottom of the bay, buried in the pebbly silt of the lake bottom.

And now a part of Trinity Lake.

The sparkling light, perhaps, a sign that this is where it lies. 

Like a holy relic marking a sacred pilgrimage site. 

These thoughts somehow infuse my drawings. 

There is a quality to them that I can't explain - a stillness.

An energy to the line and space, yes, but a distinct simplicity.

A balance. 

A balance of the darkest darks and the lightest lights. Perhaps it is just my thoughts, and being in this place. Perhaps when I tape them to my studio wall, the unusual quality will be gone.

I carefully shift backwards, my left arm, my drawing arm, numb. 

I want to move back out of the bright morning light and have a proper look. 

I have forgotten that one of my drawing pens lies in my lap, and as I move, I see it all in slow motion.
The pen.
Diving end over end, downward, flashing in the twinkling, dancing light, visible against the flat lake,
piercing the water.

It disappears.

How long did it take, I wonder.
Less than five seconds?
Laying my remaining drawing materials back from the edge, I strip off.
I can do this.
Not only "I can do this", but now, "I've got to do this".

If my pen can, so can I.


                                             *



August, 1974

Wren came.

The odd stilted dance between Bud and me, now became an odd stilted dance between Bud, Wren and me. 
Bud and Wren had never met, but knew of each other, through me.
Unspoken, was my new intimacy with Bud.
An intimacy which left us both hungry for more.
I now saw him in a totally different light. 
To be truthful, I wanted to, yearned to be alone with him. 

And in a crazy way, I wanted the same with Wren.
As I say, all of this, unspoken.
Bud's and my intimacy remained so.

Wren and I spent the day, largely, planning, packing, organizing food for our canoe trip. 

If it felt somewhat half-hearted on my part, I thankfully managed to put all of that aside for Wren's sake.
Bud worked outside for most of the day replacing boards on the cottage deck, and as the three of us had a beer and a meal on the late afternoon sun-warmed new cedar, he mumbled something about heading out.

Wren, in her innocence, asked Bud, "Why don't you come with us?"

It was all arranged before I had time to inspect carefully the ramifications of this decision. 
So I merrily went along.