-
Our Best Selves
- University of Pittsburgh Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
21 Our Best Selves in memory of Miriam Goodman (1938–2008) Like actors in summer stock we played our best selves visiting her rustic cabin. I lay on the floor in a back room with the cranky grandson and played Candyland until he went down for a nap. Paula played Bach’s cello suites on the screened porch, each note a mournful summons, orderly, unfolding. * * * On the dock with their father the boys learned to extract the hook without tearing the flesh, to cast 22 their lines in a joyous arc. Leslie swam across the lake, her body a rhythmic voluptuousness, her steady plashing a signal to the terrier ashore. Miriam hailed and embraced summer and winter people in the annual June convocation at the beach, updates and invitations all around: they could see she was sick, bewigged, but she was here, now, steadying herself against the piling, going in slowly, the burning chill on her thighs, [44.197.251.102] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 02:34 GMT) 23 on her hips, her waist, as she studied the familiar lake, its inlets, pines, and boulders vivid as the cabin’s manifest, the list of essential linens and batteries and cast iron pots passed on each year— revised and copied— for her beloveds. * * * Grilled vegetables, beet soup, corn, and nine of us round the table pouring and laughing, stories of the day taking on their initial color and flavor before we cook them in summer’s brine— misquotes and retellings. Beneath a full moon, inside their tent, 24 the boys undress, and we see their limbs— animated cave paintings against the tent’s fabric— or a shadow play enacting one summer day. Scrabble players assemble at the table. This year Jules wins every game, and when she laughs, her red hair ripples as it did when she was ten and wild as her eldest awake in his sleeping bag, looking up at his grandmother’s sky, imagining the salamanders he’ll catch tomorrow. ...