The Big Questions

            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.