VERMONT, 2011

Once again, we have visited.

Once again, we have endured the long Canadian miles.

Once again, we have crowded together on the screened-in porch.

Once again, we have fished.

The rituals have changed little since we were young. But now I am the patriarch, the same age as our father when he died. I am the one beholding the antics of small children, and trying to mediate between the dogs.

There must be an ending. We can’t stay out on the lake forever, casting and retrieving loud poppers in the evening, drifting and letting the wind drag Mister Twisters over the weed beds in the afternoon. If we never stopped, then fishing would become the same as life, and we would need some new ritual to punctuate the meaning of our days.

So there must be an ending. My sister Casey does Tai Chi on the dock, summoning the fluid cottonwoods to move with her. Sitting near her on the same dock, Grandson Teagan talks to a turtle, treating his aunt’s sacred posturing as a perfectly normal example of adult behavior. I watch from a chair on the lawn, silently reciting the psalms for the day and tossing a tennis ball for Remi the Dog. At some point we all stop, our holy rituals concluded. Casey and Teagan begin a discussion about turtles; I put my Daily Office Book away and go in search of coffee. All our daily deeds are no less holy, yet without Tai Chi and turtles we might not notice, and without recited psalms our lives trail off into unpunctuated air…

So there must be an ending, a last cast, a final encore, a death.

So, once again we have said goodbye.

Once again, we have watched Lake Champlain recede into the past.

Once again, we have died.

Once again, we have fished.

Once again, we have visited.

Once again, we have endured the long Canadian miles.

Once again, we have crowded together on the screened-in porch.

Once again, we have died.

Once again, we have fished.