Findley Lake

“It’s going to be a nice day,” Tracy says, “because mist is rising from the pond.”

We have yet to see many misty mornings here on the outskirts of Findley Lake, but we remain hopeful. It has been a cool, rainy summer for all of New York State, and in this far western edge of Chautauqua County, when the sun comes out, we all rush outdoors. Yesterday, Liz and I sat on the porch of the Main Street Café simply because we could. It was an uneventful afternoon in the village and yet people were about. Strolling, bicycling, boating. Across the street from the café is Findley Lake itself, formed from two ponds in 1815 when Alexander Findley built a dam to power his sawmill.

Driving around the lake – Sunnyside Road runs along the eastern border and Shadyside Road along the west – it’s easy to get a sense of those two original ponds. The road curls easily, dipping in and out around two sections of calm, welcoming water, each centered with a dot of island. At first glance, Findley Lake is a typical tiny summer resort: one short stretch of shops and eateries and lakeside properties that range from one-room cottages to gingerbread Victorians. The locals will tell you stories, however, of how they were drawn to this place, how there is some small magical element to the lay of the land and the lore of its inhabitants that held them here when they thought they were only passing through.

We, too, are charmed, and when the sun goes behind the clouds and we take a last glance at the water, we notice two boys and their boat, one rowing the rippled surface and one swimming alongside. They are Every Boys, spirits from a century ago and today. The very essence of a summer afternoon.

On Pedicures and Peeves

While some folks seek only to beautify their feet and toes with soaking, exfoliating, trimming, filing and painting, I have a philosophical commitment to pedicures. I acknowledge that we depend on our feet to support us our entire lives, no matter how much we weigh. There are whole humans who can’t or won’t fulfill that need for us, though we expect these boney little platforms to do so. You have to admit, it’s a lot to ask of a body feature that probably comprises about 3 percent of our total bulk. If we were buildings, we would collapse once we reached puberty.

And yet, we don’t. Our feet carry us on our way, wherever that may lead us. So I’ve promised my feet that I will take care of them, and that means a monthly pedicure at RoseyToes Mani/Pedi Lounge. It’s pricier than other cattle-call, pick-color-you-pay-me-now salons. What you get in this loft of pampering is much like a facial for your feet. Plus, they use stainless steel tubs, which they scrub and sterilize after each use. My favorite part of the process is the ten-minute foot and calf massage, followed by a hot towel wrap. Oh, sweetness. The gallons of angst that wash away down the drain of that place.

So you will understand my dismay when, on my last visit, the customer sitting next to me answered her clamoring cell phone, right in the midst of my massage. The ring was the first couple bars of Rod Stewart, singing “Maggie May”: Wake up, Maggie, I think I got something to say to you… I used to enjoy this song, but it’s ruined forever for me, because a squinchy-faced, ultra-apologetic woman (“Sorry, I have to take this, I’m buying a new computer.”) held forth 20 minutes with techno chatter, including an argument with her teenage son, to whom she wished to give the old, restored computer, but the son was having none of it. He wanted a new one, just like the machine she was purchasing. I don’t know if I was angrier with the woman or with myself because I was too polite to suggest she save her business for later.

But now I’m using our blog for that very purpose: Wake up, lady, and all other cell phone zealots, I think I got something to say to you. Unless there’s an emergency, you don’t HAVE to take a cell phone call. You don’t HAVE to make the dribs and drabs of your personal life public. All of it can WAIT an hour until you are home or hermetically sealed in your car. Here’s another tip: a bathroom stall doesn’t qualify, nor does a booth in a restaurant.

I have a pedicure next Wednesday. I pray that I can care for my deserving feet in peace, and that you will do your part to protect sacred American spaces from the yammering national compulsion of cell phones.

Happy 4th of July, everyone!

Nesting and Empty Nesting

We live in Philadelphia, in what my mother would have dubbed an "old fashioned neighborhood." As I walk up to yoga class early in the morning, John and Julie pull out of the garage they added to their row house and wave proudly and Fred calls "Youse guys have a good day!" The man who sports a helmet with Viking horns rides his old three speed bike around. We're not sure where he sleeps but local merchants give him odd jobs sweeping stoops and cleaning windows so we all know he eats when he's hungry. The past few days the residents of the four attached houses that face our tiny garden courtyard off busy Third Street, have all bonded over a pair of cardinals we've noticed day after day in the Japanese maple just outside my front door. One of my neighbors, Brian, finally found the nest we all suspected they were guarding when they'd flit from window ledge to rooftop to maple tree branch, calling and waking us, early in the morning, drawing the attention of six cats who sit in a variety of windows in the houses, fixed on the birds' every movement.

The nest of course, is in the other tree in our courtyard, a lacy bowl of twigs that looks as if it would blow over in a single rain. When my neighbor, Sue, points it out to me (Brian showed Stan and Reena, Reena showed her,) the parent birds become agitated. It's in the nature of all good parents to protect, maybe even at times overprotect, their young. Still the little guys have to leave the nest sometime, often awkwardly, and we all know not all of the baby birds will make it. So our fifth family in the courtyard, our feathered family, has become the talk of the community.

Yesterday, two round, brown fluffy baby cardinals were trying out their wings and ended up hopping around in the hosta and impatiens in the postage stamp size flower beds beneath their tree. Sue and I were out with our cameras and our visitors. Her brother and his family are in from a small town in Massachusetts. My son and his wife are visiting for the weekend and will leave their cat, Rishi, with us for the summer as they head down to DC, to internship work and a summer sublet which, unlike their apartment building in the heart of Chicago, doesn't allow pets. Our two cats, Ukee and Chloe, are staking territory with the interloper and the fur is literally flying. The semi-orderly quiet of the urban empty nest my husband and I have set up has been tossed, probably for the duration of summer. The grown kids will come and go and the third cat will stay and stalk our two, loudly inviting them to play or fight.

When my daughter was little, she spent a half hour a day at least in Mr. Rogers' neighborhood which was populated by hand puppets, a small wooden train and a gentle postman who appeared and disappeared with a cheery "speedy delivery!" This was a place of pure safety where grown ups spoke kindly to children at all times. We lived in a very near in suburb of Philadelphia, an old suburb with sidewalks and a branch of the township library within easy walking distance, houses not large but detached and suburban none-the-less. I thought I would give all that up when I moved into the heart of Center City Philadelphia, that noise and anonymity would be the costs of our empty nesting change in our lives. How wrong, how wrong.

"How do the birds get back into the nest when they've hopped out?" Little Taylor, Sue's visiting nephew asks her now. "They don't want to, honey," she answers and though he's way too young to get what this means, he just nods as if he does, and returns to playing his drums.

Omagh

In County Tyrone, we stayed in Fivemiletown, home of the ancestors who emigrated from Ireland too long ago to have left a mark. I wanted a feel for the place. A sense of the village and the lay of the land surrounding it. It was pretty much unspectacular: one ordinary little street surrounded by lovely green fields. Reason enough for Timothy Dumars and his children to move on maybe.

We drove to Derry on the wide River Foyle, where our tourguide talked openly of the city’s history with The Troubles and pointed out the memorials to Bloody Sunday. At the Ulster Folk Park outside Omagh, exhibits portrayed the Irish farmers and weavers who sailed to America when faced with eviction, hunger, or religious and political persecution. Many, like my own ancestors, went to Pennsylvania.

Then we went into Omagh city center. I knew about the Real IRA car bombing that killed 29 people, including a woman pregnant with twins, in 1998 – well after the start of the peace process -- and I expected to see memorials similar to ones in Derry. The town map from the visitor centor listed a memorial garden, but I remembered the explosion as being in the middle of a busy shopping area. On Market Street I did find a tall blue pillar with a heart etched at its top, but there was no hint of its significance.

I went into a bookstore and, finding no books on the local tragedy, asked for a local newspaper. The shopkeeper shuffled through various stacks of papers before offering me one. “This is local,” she said, “and it presents both sides of the community.”

It set me back a bit to think that in a town of that size there might be a newspaper that only Catholics read and another strictly for Protestants. Rather like Americans reading only Republican or Democratic papers. And it made me wonder if the shopkeeper had hestiated in choosing a newspaper for me because she feared handing me the wrong one.

Back in Fivemiletown, I fell into conversation with the Methodist minister, a woman who spoke proudly of the new church windows. “The old windows were destroyed in a bomb blast. Not a bomb in the church, of course, but in the village.”
“Why here?” I glanced over my shoulder at the usual shops and pubs and houses.
She shrugged. “It happens.”

No where are we safe from violence. Or paranoia. I understand that. But I have difficulty imagining car bombs in the small American towns where I lived most of my life. Nor in Richmond, Virginia, where I live now. And while I try to avoid offending my Republican friends, I don’t live in fear that they will have me killed. All of which brings me to a toast:

Cheers to my Irish ancestors for choosing their new country well, and Happy Independence Day to us all.