I look up from the full table, beyond the long white porch of Lauren’s rental cottage, at the changes on the lake. Before breakfast,
savory crepes: eggs, bacon, spinach, tomato, cheese, salsa; sweet crepes: strawberries, bananas, nutella, home-whipped cream with four friends while our grad student husbands take Saturday midterms
Cayuga lake was serenely still, but now under a low thick sky, southbound white caps rage. I take my hair down and slip out alone and barefoot to the pepper pebble beach to watch the storm roll in. A wall of rain creeps toward me down the lake, white boats and birds rushing ahead of it. I wait in the first September chill for the cool drops to splash my face, taking it all in:
The wind on my eyelids; the sound- the most peaceful kind of loud; the smell- rain and summer; The gray- who knew I’d love the gray? Gray sky, gray beach, driftwood, gray water, even the green slope across the finger lake is veiled by haze. There’s something beautiful about the unity of this uniform neutral natural gray; The power.
Awe. Might. Not my might. humbled. Perfect.
With arms tight crossed in my moistening sweater and bare legs prickling, I dawdle back in to friends and children.
