Last
week, when Marilyn and I were spending a couple of days in Saugatuck-Douglas-- gay-friendly,
art-filled towns on the shore of Lake Michigan--I swam in the lake just before
sunset. If you have seen Lake Michigan,
you know it looks like the sea, vast and stretching to the horizon. As I swam away from the shore, all I could
see before me were the sun and the shimmering golden line that was its
reflection in the otherwise silver-blue water.
I felt like I was on the edge of the world. Of course I knew that I could turn around and
see Marilyn on the beach, could swim, even walk back, the water was that shallow. But as I swam away from shore, I felt the vastness.
In
the face of such vastness, of being on what feels like the edge, I found myself
asking the big questions: How did all this get here? What is beyond the sky? How will this world end? Will
it end? Where do we go when we end, when we die?
I am an agnostic, so I do not turn to religious scripture for
answers. Instead, I am drawn to scientific theories..
Marilyn
and I had been dwelling on some of those questions just a few days before as we
watched the PBS NOVA special about the mission to fly by Pluto. Every now and then, we would turn to each
other and laugh in delight and disbelief: How
far is Pluto? How long did they take to figure out how to get this mission to
work? With Marilyn, I can share a sense
of awe and confusion and excitement about the universe.
I
felt a similar sense of awe at the lake, even though I knew Chicago was on the
other side. As the sun moved closer to
the horizon, suddenly waves started to hit the shore in quick succession. Until then, there had been hardly any waves
at all.
“It’s
got to be the sun!” I said to Marilyn. “The
moon causes tides. The sun is so much
bigger. The setting sun is causing the
waves!” We decided we’d ask someone who’d
know, maybe our late friend Amy’s husband, who is an astronomer.
As
we packed up our towels and folded our beach chairs, Marilyn said, “Look! She looks just like Amy! Even the dress. Amy would wear that dress to the
beach.”
I
looked over to where a slender, white woman with long brown hair just a shade
darker than Amy’s was leaning down to talk to a brown boy of about nine (Amy’s
daughter’s age, I couldn’t help thinking).
The woman was wearing a navy blue dress that ended above her knees, and
her sunglasses rested on the top of her head, holding back her hair. It was Amy!
It couldn’t be,
of course. I had seen Amy’s body at the
funeral home last spring, kissed the top of her head as I said goodbye. I stared and then forced myself to look
away.
When
I looked again as we walked by, she had straightened up; she wasn’t as tall as
Amy. I caught a glimpse of her
face. Her features were darker than Amy’s. But then she turned away and leaned down towards
her son, and the illusion reasserted itself.
Tears pricked my eyes as we walked along the beach.
“The
colors keep changing, don’t they?” It
was the man I assumed was her husband, a dark-skinned man who made me think of
Amy’s handsome husband. He was smiling
at me and gesturing to the sky aglow in pink and blue and lavender.
“Yes. They’re beautiful,” I replied, hoping he
couldn’t hear the tears in my voice.
As
Marilyn and I headed to the stairs that would take us up and away from Douglas
Beach, I kept looking back, wanting to see Amy once again.
