"Summer's Gone Away"

Nantucket

It's 9 a.m. When I walked in the door to the beach house just now from a long, last, luxurious stroll to Smith's Point, I heard the familiar drone of the dryer. The contrast is not lost on me today, the day I leave this house. The tranquility and inner calm that inspires me here to try to be a better person is juxtaposed with the day- to-dayness of finishing the last of the laundry, making up all the beds for the next tenants, drying the last dish in the sink, taking out the last bag of recyclables
( "Now, which is comingled," my adult children would say, " plastic and aluminum or plastic and glass?" ).

It's quiet here. The birthday party is over, the triathlon in the rain complete, the family photo "I need it for my Christmas card", I said, before I took the first group back to the airport.

I sit here in gratitude, profoundly moved at the events of the time we had together. ( My sons are now chuckling as they readd this, saying to themselves :" OK. This is when she says: ' We may never have time together again like this, so we have to relish it--you just don't know'" And they would be right. That is what I'm thinking. Perhaps because my father died at 60, perhaps because I was only 19 at the time and had much to say and learn from him, I'm keenly aware of the gifts of fleeting moments in time when my family touches. It's what Michelangelo does with the Sistine ceiling--just a touch--that changes everything.

I don't know who will be staying here next. By then, the house will be in order. No beer bottles by the garbage can, the dryer will be still, the kitchen table will be uncluttered.

But I hear sounds here right now.

I hear Edward crying in the night, then a sudden suckling sound as his sleepy mother nurtures him. I hear Ethan calling to me: " Read THIS book to me, Grammie. I WANT you to." I hear Chris telling me how to extend the kitchen table for the party, and both of us laughing at my clumsiness and difficulty following his direction. I hear Jennifer saying: " I'm gettin' out-a here while the gettin's good-- before you three ( Chris, Ben and me ) start moving any more stuff around."

And I hear Benjamin singing one of his soulful, brilliant ( I'm his mom--but they are ) tunes, my grandson wide-eyed next to him, as 11 of us gathered around the fire on a stormy Sunday night to welcome him to his 35th year on this planet. As the fire crackles in my mind's eye, I hear everyone in the room join him as he croons: "Summer's Gone Away...".

M.C.