Ingrid
took the towels from the linen closet, to walk
down
and meet the girls at the lake. But she
lingered
at the closet door and took in the crisp, fine, smell, regretting that
the summer was almost over. The girls had been hers for the past three months,
and her heart was heavy with their eminent departure. For the past eight
summers they had been hers and she had feared that, too, was almost over. One,
maybe two, more summers and they would disappear from her life. Then what?
Oh,
there would be the promises - let's keep in
touch
- but Ingrid
knew the day would come when
'summers'
meant trips to Europe and points beyond, that did not include her. What would
she do, hire herself out to another family? At her age she wondered if she had
it in her to start anew with
someone else's retinue. She would
be hard pressed to start with someone young, her years declining, not so
gracefully now.
She
very quietly shut the closet door and stood
silent,
listening to old house, listening to the lapping from the lake. It had been her
privilege, but that, too, was closing. She held the towels close to her face
and breathed in. Summers.
She heard the girls squealing out
by the raft and set out down to the lakefront. The back stairs moaned under her
weight. The grass, so lush and green, felt like velvet under her feet. Then the
pebbles, so smooth and rounded, down to the shore and the kiss of cool water up
to her knees. She took it all in.The lake, the house, the woods beyond, a
magical place she sensed she would miss even before leaving. Ingrid sighed
deeply but her reverie was broken by the girls, who hurled themselves into the
water and swam frantically ashore, and into her arms. She dried them briskly,
both giggling, as the sun was setting and hints of Fall were already the air.
Their
laughter continued to fill the early evening,
and
night would mean sitting around the campfire,
perhaps
one last time. The parents would arrive
tomorrow,
stay a few days, perhaps a week, but it
wasn't
the same, and then they'd be gone.
V
