Finding The Happy Place, Summer Rituals and Locations To Find Oneself At Ease

From my earliest memories, until my college years, a piece of heaven was always Loch Lebanon, Lebanon Reservoir, where my grandparents spend their summer days outside of Hamilton, New York. They would close up their village home and move to their two-bedroom cabin where my grandmother could sing, "I see the dam cars and the dam cars sing me." We'd fish, swim, boat, walk to the candy store, play softball and pitch until we were exhausted.

It was nirvana. Grandma could grill up her sausage and grandpa could drink his Milwaukee's Best, hoping that Grandpa Ken and Grandma Vera would pay us a visit from Sheruburne, NY. It was a retreat from the everyday, just like my Aunt Rena and Uncle Russel's house on the St. Lawrence River. A fisherman's paradise for seeing ships coming in from the Atlantic and an aquatic life of serenity and calm.

I often channel such locations in my adult life and go their to help myself to sleep: days without an Internet, cable t.v. or 24/7 news cycles. All I needed was my fishing pole and a worm and I was content.

Chitunga has found such serenity in the Adirondacks, where he goes every weekend, and I can't blame him for loving his retreat. There are SkeeDoos and pontoons, pitch black nights, and lots of critters to listen to as one falls asleep.

I am thinking, too, of Casey and Dave's retreat on the St. Lawrence River and how quiet and calm the nights were there, even as my mother bumped into a wall in the pitch black night putting me into hysterics. Of course she walked into a wall when it was too dark to see. It cracked me up.

I'm an Aquarian and I need my water to feel centered and alive. I looked out at the Long Island Sound yesterday reconfiguring my soul and longing for a time that once was. Water is at the center of it all and so is peace, a natural order, and the ecosystems of frogs, fish, fireflies, dragonflies and birds.

My grandmother loved night most of all and would sing with the frogs, "I'm in the mood. I'm in the mood. Not tonight, Butch. Not tonight. Shut up, kids. Shut up, kids." and in the morning, when the sun glistened on the lake she would say, "The stars have returned to Loch Lebanon to wash their nightly worries. Let them bathe and shine for us to love."

I love that Chitunga has found such a location and I look forward to having him share it with me next weekend. I'm afraid, though, that I might get a little Papi Butch. I might fill up with tears and simply cry and the beauty of it all.