Doing nothing and yet something – granting the self a time of contemplation, of rejuvenation. The nights were silent nights. It seemed decadent, this nothing yet something. Giving myself permission to sit out on the deck of the lake house, bundled in a parka, I listened to the wind moving the leaves against each other making a sound as if saying “shhhh” and commanding my brain to relish the silence, the cold. Glittering lights from docks across the water, whose reflections continuously move, decorate the scene. The “shhhh” of the wind blends with yet another sound, the motion of the water powered by this wind causing the waves to lap gently against the bulkheads, methodically, hypnotically saying relax, relax – and the silence of the night, the “sounds of silence,” seeps inside me, soothing my soul.
(Post Script: We, my daughter and I, have shared many marvelous trips. This short one, though, seemed somehow especially comforting.)