Nice View

The lake is glittering somewhere behind the trees. We can see glimpses of it from our porch and it’s lovely, but could we make a better view? Cut a few branches off the trees lining the yard? Maybe ask the people across the street if we can trim some of their branches?

The couple next door invites us over for drinks and dessert. We sit on their porch and marvel at their view, which is expansive and amazing and totally different from the water-fluttering-between-leaves thing we’ve got going on. I paid a lot for that, the husband says. 

I want to say, How much? Instead, we have the usual get-to-know-you conversation we’ve been having over and over again since we’ve moved here, which honestly, feels more like an interview. Where are you from and How did you find out about this place and what made you decide to move here? The intake of breath when we say we’ll be living here year-round. 

Every time someone does this, and it happens every time, I’ve been assuming they mean the weather. The majority of people living here are summer people. Most head home after Labor Day. They shudder at the cold, the snow. I make a joke about snow not bothering me. I grew up in New England, I say, brightly. 

When the truth is I haven’t been back to New England in winter for decades. I spent all of my adult life in the South or Midwest. A few years ago, when my husband and I visited our son and daughter-in-law up here in November, we were marveling at the cold. Our daughter-in-law works on a farm and our son took us on a tour. We tromped around a frigid field and I was laughing at how &$^%# cold it was. Aren’t you cold? I asked my son. 

No, he said. I’m wearing long johns. 

(Rule number one for surviving the winter: Dress for the weather.)

The couple with the awesome lake view clues us in on all the social things going on around here. The weekly potlucks and gatherings, the cookouts and concerts and theater performances. The tennis (Do you play tennis? No) the sailing (Do you sail? No) Hiking? What do you like to do? 

The wife asks me this, and for a minute, my mind literally goes blank. 

My husband looks over at me. She likes hiking, he says. Also, she likes to garden. 

Right! I say, grinning like an idiot. I do like those things. 

But I have no time for them. Three weeks here and these people are serious about their social calendar. They invite us to a group What’s App channel so they can share all of the goings-on. We show up at their potlucks and cookouts and parties and concerts. We do more interview-conversations and respond to more gasps about our year-round plan, and suddenly, it hits me that this is not about the weather. Or maybe it’s not only about the weather. 

It’s about the summer ending and everyone leaving, and all of the tennis and sailing and social activities going away with them. Maybe they can't imagine what they would do if they stayed?

We go to a gathering at someone’s house on the lake. Where are you from? (Ohio) How did you find out about this place? (Our son and daughter-in-law live here) What made you decide to move here? (We’ve been visiting them for years and loved it more each time we came) So, you’ll be here year-round? (Yes) 

Gasp, but it’s a different kind of gasp. This person, it turns out, is a year-rounder herself. 

It's definitely quieter after the summer people leave, she tells me. But there's still stuff going on. Don't worry. What do you like to do? (Write, read books, putter around the library, hang out with family and friends) 

Then you'll be fine.