This Side Up

Plans interrupted...thankfully

John Howell
Posted 8/18/15

We looked at each other and laughed. Was this crazy or what?

Carol had her bathing suit and sandals on. A towel was draped across her neck.

“Well, are you going to get your suit …

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This Side Up

Plans interrupted...thankfully

Posted

We looked at each other and laughed. Was this crazy or what?

Carol had her bathing suit and sandals on. A towel was draped across her neck.

“Well, are you going to get your suit on?”

That made perfect sense if I was going to be swimming. I’d been in the lake that morning. The water was warm and clear. It was perfect, inviting.

But that was in the morning, before the clouds built like giant scoops of vanilla ice cream in the sky. There were scoops upon scoops – triple and quadruple deckers – with dark gray undersides and wispy tops melting into the blue.

It was going to be a hot day, you could feel it in the thick air, and had Oliver been with us he would be nervously looking around for a place to hide. He knows when a storm is brewing long before it hits.

He figured it out that fateful Tuesday when Governor Francis Farms and wide swaths of neighborhoods were left in shambles. We were up at 5, a good hour before the storm hit, but Ollie wasn’t on his “sleeping couch” or downstairs curled on a chair we’ve covered with a blanket, as it’s one of his preferred spots.

We didn’t think anything of it. Oliver would let us know when he was ready to go outside, and there was no question we’d hear it if he didn’t get breakfast. Had we looked, we would have found him under the bed in the furthest and darkest corner.

But we didn’t have “Ollie the storm forecaster” with us this weekend. Ollie hasn’t made the trip to upstate New York. We haven’t taken him on a trip longer than a half hour, and even that is barely tolerable. The problem is he loves being in the car. It’s an opportunity to see people and other dogs, and when that happens he starts whining and then howling. He wants to meet everybody. A night drive or some form of sedation, which we really don’t want to try, are the options.

Those three- and four-scoop cones in the sky turned dark by early afternoon. Thunder rumbled, the wind built, and curtains of rain obscured the lake. Carol ran around the house shutting windows. It was a cracker, but thankfully without the macrobursts that devastated so much of Warwick.

The storm lasted an hour. The wind died, followed by a light rain. We weren’t going to let this interrupt a summer day. The lake was beckoning.

This was the plan: a swim and maybe some time to just unwind and enjoy having nothing better to do.

The storm intruded. It disrupted “the plan.” And yet, that is the beauty of life – those things we couldn’t have planned, and likely would have done differently, had we known.

So you improvise. And often, remarkably, things really work out for the better. You never know what might surprise you.

I found my bathing suit and a towel. It was still raining. I grabbed an umbrella and we walked to the lake, heavy drops ticking on the leaves above.

“It’s cold,” Carol said of the rain. It was, but we knew the lake would be warm.

I placed the umbrella over the towels and we sprinted down the dock to dive in. Raindrops pitted the surface. We had the lake to ourselves.

But we were being watched. I didn’t notice it at first. It didn’t move, however, its size was overpowering the top branches of a pine on the lakeshore. Its white head made it immediately identifiable. It was a bald eagle.

We tread water and watched. Perhaps it knew it had been spotted. Maybe it just was tired of its perch. Soundlessly, it spread its massive wings, swooped low and then wheeled above the trees. We just watched without saying anything.

The rain tapered off, but nonetheless we used the umbrella to get back to the house.

We couldn’t have planned it, and that’s what made one swim all the more rewarding.

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