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A Day Off From the World

Contributing Opinion Writer

Great Pond in the Belgrade Lakes region of central Maine.Credit...The Washington Post, via Getty Images

BELGRADE LAKES, Me. — This is the story of a day in Maine. It contains no mention of Himself, because He is all we ever talk about now, in these days of the Troubles. Instead, I hope you will allow me to celebrate a few small things, now that so much else has been lost.

The night before, last thing before bed, I had mixed up some pizza dough. The recipe is pretty simple — all it really requires is flour, yeast, sea salt and time.

This last ingredient is the one I never have.

The dough had been rising all night, and in the morning, on that first day of July, I divided it into a half-dozen balls dusted with flour. I covered these with a tea towel, and let them rise again.

I made an omelet for my wife, Deedie, with sausage and mushrooms and Cheddar, and we ate it on the front porch, looking out on the waters of Long Pond, here in our village of Belgrade Lakes.

The week before, she and I had celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary.

By our feet the dogs looked up at us with their old gray Labrador faces, hoping for a tidbit, and in this they were not completely disappointed.

After breakfast, we got in our little boat — the Red Wedding — and scudded across the lake to poke our heads in at the general store and visit the farmers’ market. We startled a great blue heron. It rose unexpectedly from the reeds along the bank.

I once told my daughter that she reminded me of the heron. “Sometimes you think you’re too awkward, or too strange,” I said. “But then you take wing.”

It’s O.K. if you want to roll your eyes at this. My daughter rolled her eyes too.

At the farmers’ market we bantered with the right-wing sausage man. Sometimes he wears a T-shirt that reads, “PETA: People Eating Tasty Animals.” We also bought some garlic scapes, and some pesto, and some greens for salad.

Deedie and I headed back home and I tied the boat up at the dock. The dogs were howling piteously, unable to believe we hadn’t included them on the boat ride.

The howling had somehow failed to wake my son. He’s home after graduating from college in May, and is spending the summer lolling around the lake house before heading on to graduate school in robotics. There, my son shall be a Wolverine.

When Sean finally woke up, we sat down together and watched the World Cup. Croatia beat Denmark, 3-2, on a penalty kick. I have loved spending time with him this summer watching soccer. Sometimes I wish the games would go on forever.

It was hot for Maine — in the high 80s — and I spent part of the day swimming in the lake. Long Pond is full of rocks, and I banged my knee against one of them as I swam, and said, “Ow!” “Jenny,” said my wife. “Are you O.K.?”

She’d been working in the garden. There she was, surrounded by elfin mountain laurel, Joe Pye weed, penstemon and masterwort.

I was fine. I took a walk down our dirt road. One of my neighbors passed me on an ATV. I tipped my straw hat to him as he went by.

In the afternoon my daughter and her girlfriend and three of her friends arrived, having driven up from Washington, where it was considerably hotter. There was a lot of hugging and kissing. The dogs barked at everybody. Bottles of ale were cracked open.

The young people hung around inside listening to the Decemberists while Deedie and I had gin and tonics on the porch. Then I tied on an apron and started up the pizza factory.

I made six pies in all. One was a pie of capicola and mascarpone and fennel and red chili sauce, a recipe I got from Sullivan Street Bakery. Another featured the meat of one whole lobster which I’d steamed earlier; I’d taken the shell of the lobster and simmered it in the red sauce. A third pie was exotic mushrooms, chicken sausage and the pesto I got at the farmers’ market. A fourth was pork sausage and fennel. Then there were two pepperoni pies — one with turkey pepperoni, one with the traditional. All of these were garnished with basil from the garden.

For dessert we ate blueberry pie with ice cream.

I cleaned this all up as the young people headed out to the dock in the dark to swim. As I wiped down the counters, I listened to the new “lost” John Coltrane album, “Both Directions at Once,” which after 50 years on a shelf still sounds shocking and new.

Then my wife and I climbed into bed. Through the open windows we heard the calling of loons. They mate for life.

From the dock we heard the soft voices of our children and their friends. I read a little bit of Rakesh Satyal’s extraordinary novel “No One Can Pronounce My Name” before my eyelids felt heavy, and I turned off my light. I could tell by Deedie’s breathing that she was already asleep.

But I lay there for a while in the dark, listening to the sounds.

As I slowly drifted off, I thought of the closing lines of Manuel Puig’s “The Kiss of the Spider Woman,” when two lovers speak to each other through the strange haze of a dream.

“Oh, how much I love you!” says one. “That was the only thing I couldn’t tell you, I was so afraid” that “I was going to lose you forever.”

“No, Valentin, beloved,” comes the reply. “That will never take place, because this dream is short. But this dream is happy.”

Jennifer Finney Boylan (@JennyBoylan), a contributing opinion writer, is a professor of English at Barnard College of Columbia University and the author of the novel “Long Black Veil.” Her column appears on alternate Wednesdays.

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