Good morning.
Every year we pack up the van, throw the canoe on top, and take the kids camping on the north shore and up the Gunflint trail for a week. Our farm partners take care of chores and animals, we leave our laptops at home, and we go away. It feels too rich. Too indulgent. Too audacious to just go away and leave everything to someone else. But we do it anyway. We have to.
Harvey caught his first fish. His bobber went down, his little blue rod bent in an arc. He hauled in a plucky perch that we cooked on the Coleman camp stove. He shared it with all of us. He smiled all night.
Signe heard the loons calling each morning and night. “Balloons,” she calls them. “Mama! I hear the ball-oons!”
We went swimming every day. One day we spent four hours on the beach, sitting in the water, wading, dozing. Harvey reconstructed a 3,000-year-old UFO that had coincidentally crashed at the very beach we were swimming at. It took him hours to piece together the rocks and driftwood that remained of the wreck. Then he took it apart to destroy the evidence. “No one should know about this,” he said.
This trip always feels special, but with Harvey starting kindergarten this September, it felt a bit more important. His sphere of influence is about to explode. He’ll be away from home and from us longer than ever before on a regular basis. He’ll make friends. Enemies. He’ll learn stuff. He’ll see and hear things we haven’t wanted him to see and hear. He’ll see and hear all the things he didn’t know were possible. He’ll be delighted. He’ll be disappointed. He will become more. It’s wonderful and it’s unknown.
A perennial topic of conversation we have is about the lasts: the last time you hold your child in your lap; the last time you breastfeed your wee one; the last day before a first tooth; the last time you draw a bath for your kid. You usually don’t know it is the last time while it is happening. A blessing, probably. This can be taken too far and can become overly sentimental, unhelpfully so, but it can also be a sweet and tender way of thinking about life with children. They keep changing while you stay more or less the same. So, at the risk of viewing this camping trip as more than it is, I did at times think of it as the last one before our oldest kid goes to kindergarten. A defense against the lasts that I won’t know are happening until I look back. An indulgence in a particular parenting trope that feels a bit too rich. But I did it anyway. I had to.
Sundries
John Keene’s recent Paris Review interview. I both love and loathe reading interviews in this periodical. They are always with famous writers and are full of interesting insights into their personal and professional lives, but almost always follow an inevitable formula of Ivy League education, being friends with other famous people, and all getting published together and riding off into the sunset. The story that Keene shared of his genesis as a writer took a few interesting diversions, however. He became well known for his blog in the early 2000s, which is a quirky niche that could have only happened during that small window of time in internet culture.
Before we set off on our camping trip, I noticed the front tires of the van had uneven wear on the treads. Out of alignment, I thought! Checking the caster and camber led to installing new control arm bushings, which led to new struts, and while you’ve got it all apart you might as well pull the old wheel bearings and install new ones. The front end rides nice and quiet now and the suspension is much improved.
Plums galore.
A Different Set of Answers, Part 1
I keep coming back to the idea of including some experimental short fiction in this newsletter. I haven’t written much in the way of short stories or flash fiction, and thought this supportive platform would be a good place to give it a try. In lieu of a complete and polished piece appearing in any given issue, I have decided to serialize it, and to make an honest attempt to keep the installments coming. I welcome any and all feedback.
The candle in Alastair’s upstairs apartment had the same satisfying smell. The same slender handmade elegance and imperfection of the candles she gingerly set in the narrow brass candleholder in Maine before she left her husband. Maine was over, and her windows no longer opened to the sea beyond the harbor. The worn wooden pier and the smell of a fresh catch were far away. This candle burned clean and even without the drips and flickers from salty breezes and wafting curtains. Alastair drew her hand slowly over the steady flame. Not too close. She wasn’t into doing that. Just curious. She still had twenty minutes or so before leaving for work, so she lit it for something to do. But now she was thinking about Maine. There had been a cozy coffee shop below their apartment. More often than not, Paul would bring up a morning bun and coffee for her to wake up to. He always wanted to make love in the morning, but Alastair wanted to sleep. The bun and the coffee reminded her that he’d rather be doing something else. And even though Paul knew the act was a kind one, that his wife liked warm buns and coffee, he felt like a cat leaving a dead mouse on the doormat. Her mornings here were quiet. She made her own coffee and drank it at the kitchen counter. She fed the cats. She thought about what kind of soup she would write on the specials menu board when she got to work. Alastair blew out the candle. She tucked one cigarette in the fold of her Carhartt hat and walked her bike up the steps to the street. Morning in the city affected her in a vague and warmish way, and today especially so. Yesterday the fry cook had showed her a Missed Connections ad on craigslist that she insisted was about Alastair. How many people have a red and purple bike and a red helmet, Al? It could be anybody. The thought that she stood out, that someone had noticed her specifically instead of just as a wash of anonymity that flowed through the city streets was an uncomfortable one. She took a different route, two streets over, and locked her bike to the humming gas pipe behind the kitchen.
Thanks for reading!
-Jake
A world has been revealed, little flecks in the imagination, sparks to old memories, love the fire, it's warmth, and heart! Keep it coming and may it never be the last...
Thanks as always for writing!