LOON LADIES

Living out here on the Great Lake has been quite an adjustment in lifestyle and expectation. Some changes came easy, some a little more difficult to maneuver.

None are life threathening, just a rearrangment of routine.

I find it akin to untucking a cotton shirt thats been stuffed in your jeans at the waistline. A little letting go, making a little more room to breathe, a sense of freedom.

You don't have to walk around with your stomach held in around here.

One of the things I've had to get used to is you can't just hop in the car to get something. Everything is somewhere else, and the somewhere else takes twenty minutes to get to in either direction.

But that's okay too, because the view to somewhere else is spectacular.

Also changing for me is that I don't miss the television. Who needs Survivor when I can witness it in my own backyard.

I've always loved the sounds of loons, a relative of the duck, a different fowl all together. I would hear them every now and then on trips to the Adirondacks, and would listen for them intently. They were a comfort and a reminder of a quieter time, when my children were young and I was a new mother.

According to some Indian legends, the call of the loon meant impending death. I find that hard to believe. It is such a warm and calming sound, I doubt it could be mistaken for the sound of someone's demise.

I sit now in the dark, with candles lit and his arm around my shoulder, listening for them. I can hear them amongst the cacophany of the crickets, who sound like birds tweeting, the loudest bugs I've ever heard!

They call out in the darkness, as if to say Hello, whooooo, whoooo........

There's a woman here who lives on the Lake and has been here for most of her life, most of her seventy plus years. I met her one day on my daily walk with Riley, and we struck up a conversation.

About loons. She loves the loons as much as I do, in fact she collects them.

But they have a special significance to her, even more so than to me.

"I like to think they are my husband calling good night to me" she said one early evening as she was closing up the house for the night. "He's been gone many years now, but he always kissed me goodnight. I miss that."

I blinked back my tears, for my acceptance speech to join him here in fact included those very words.

"......always kiss me goodnight."

Here's to we Loon Ladies and our never ending quest for romance.

May we always receive our kiss goodnight.