Lydia's Island #1

From Lydia's deck she can see the mainland. On a sunny day, she can see details. The high pier with barnacles spread over the wet wood pilings. Fishermen's trucks parked along the pier in a row, old and laden down with bait buckets, broken traps, and odds and ends. Lydia does not see these things in the truck beds, but she knows they are there. Dinghies are tied up at a side dock, closer to shore. Lobster boats rock at their moorings when the whalewatch boat goes out.

She sees Charlie's restaurant, with its big picture windows along the front. At night the windows are lit up, casting blocks of light across the water. Right now, the windows are opaque, reflecting blue sky only. Steam rises from thick stacks as one of Charlie's staff cooks lobsters outside. Lydia can see the green hill rising behind Charlie's, the clock in the middle of the park, the big Victorian hotel to the left of the small town beach. She can see people all over the hill, the beach, the pier.

On a sunny day, the water is navy blue. The wind whips up whitecaps. Lydia sits on her deck, at her weathered picnic table, and drinks her tea. When she finishes the tea she might walk through the woods, listening to the birds and the chipmunks and the wind. She might find the one spot where she can't see the ocean, but just the trees towering above her. She doesn't like to stay there for long. So she might walk through the woods to the back of the island, where she can't see any land ahead of her. Just ocean and horizon, a fine line separating them. She might walk along the perimeter of the island, feeling the rocks through her worn-out sneakers. She will be careful not to fall.

She might near the spot where the rock rises straight up from the water at high tide, twenty feet or more. Nobody could land a boat here. There's no room, not even in low tide. She will stop before the beach runs out and climb the hill. Climbing is harder than it once was, but she goes slow. She knows the footholds. At the top, the view rewards her. She stands in her woods, trees all around, the cliff right in front of her. She holds onto a beech tree for balance and looks down at the water foaming against the jagged rocks. If her children saw her here they would rush at her like anxious mothers, shuffling her away from danger. But they are not here. She looks at the water sucking at the rocks, foaming up, pulling out. She feels the wind lift the brim of her sunhat. Here she does not think about her past or her future. There is only the wind in the trees and the waves on the rocks.