Happy Birthday at Blarney All thirteen main windows are quickly opened to make a fresh air porch and then all the other windows are opened, too. I need the air everywhere up here, it is narcotic. Sparkling lake-washed air that will have me napping within two hours and out cold for another heavenly two. I place my things in the back bedroom, the pink room. A single bed, a chest of drawers, nightstand with a lamp; tiny and simple, the safest place on the planet. Provisions must be stored. Cold beverages gather in an ancient refrigerator in the shed- mineral water, white wine, a crazy assortment of beer that hints at who was last in residence. Budweiser bottles would be Daan, Molson cans, that’s got to be Dave, Miller High Life long neck bottles would be dead grandmother Helen, and so on. The whodunit of the summer revolves around the vodka-spiked drink left in the door of the frig. Looking for refreshment after a long, hot bike ride, my husband was nearly poisoned by a strongly laced swig of what appeared to be seltzer water. It was probably Grampa playing one of his tricks. Food goes inside camp. If it’s lobster night, then they get first dibs on space and everything else gets packed around the capital dinner. Two large containers of fresh gazpacho, grilled chicken, crème frachice, Grafton cheddar, beef ribs, white beans, sea salt butter, fall tomatoes, basil, blueberries, dark chocolate with almonds and cherries. There is a lovely food phenomena at play up here, ‘bottomless pit’ and ‘hollow leg’ seem to be a generous guest benefit. We sleep an extraordinary amount, don’t gain weight or suffer from hangovers, all of which proves that the body functions best on less stress. Excellent irony abounds at Blarney. Like the crows who squawk a daily cacophony of jeers, they are the rudest of alarm clocks in a place that has no place for alarm clocks. Our habits typically don’t include doughnuts, in fact, we wouldn’t be caught dead eating a doughnut- yet here we devour them every morning with hot coffee. In this cottage full of love and happy memories lived a couple who was miserable. This is where I cried and prayed at age fourteen to please God, start my period; it is where I cry and pray at age forty seven to please God, cease it. Blarney is a place that is at once unpretentious yet perfect, the quiet beauty who makes her statement wearing pearls. My very favorite moment comes around only a few times in a summer here. It is around 5:00 in the evening after a hot day, the sun in the west is at its hottest, books and bikinis have been the order of the day. It’s one of those rare, perfect summer days when the brilliant sky is free of cloud traffic and wind. The only preoccupation has been what’s for lunch. The sun is pouring into the camp and we are thinking about dinner for the children, and tapas and cocktails for the rest of us. Dripping pulp from a spirited watermelon fight in Lake Memphremagog, I pull out a red tin BBQ tray that is about fifty years old. On it go napkins and six small glass bowls, big enough to hold peanuts, chunks of cheddar, olives, hummus and any other random treats someone has thought to bring along- marinated mushrooms, kielbasa, fat sardines. Quickly the food is arranged and a bottle of cold white wine is uncorked. Wine glasses in a chokehold ping together with a shout of ‘here we go’ and the best part of the day on the best day of summer is properly celebrated. Later on the kids eat roasted corn on the cob and mac and cheese. They have been playing Bocce ball chaperoned by their own tapas tray of nacho chips, salsa, peanut M&M’s, and canned black olives which they impale on tiny finger tips, systematically devouring one finger after another, trying to gross each other out. They are sweaty and beautiful and giggling and the motion picture in my head goes on freeze frame. Today it is my birthday and my oldest friend is with me here tonight, she to paint, me to write, both to celebrate our birthdays- mine today and Sandy’s eclipsed a few weeks ago by the death of her Father. Steamed lobsters, Greek salads, corn with the sea salt butter, we feast and reminisce, and the Greek salad transports us back to 1980 and our travels through Europe by backpack. Our ‘finishing school’ we like to think of that trip, where we discovered ourselves and made ready to move on to marriages and babies. Over dinner we promise each other that we’ll never relinquish the wild sense of freedom captured then, we’ll carry it with us wherever we go! In the next bittersweet moment we realize that our own teenagers will never really understand us, either. My time at Blarney is integral to the happiest times of my life. Peace, joy and unfettered pleasure; the older I grow the more that I love this place. Kim Dannies ©2008 |