Door County, Wisconsin 2014

We are back in Door County this summer. Week two is coming to a close, but my head is still very much here. It is beautiful, it is home in a certain way, and it is vacation–time together for my sweetheart, M, my daughter, N, and me. The past two and a half years in my job have taken a huge toll on my real-time connections to both partner and daughter and I’ve literally been at work and missed more of our lives together than I can really stand.

My mom is with us for the whole trip and my sister, J, and her son, J-J, are on their way to join us tonight. We all love being with them. I have never stopped missing Lake Michigan since moving to the East coast. This big dose of looking at the lake at all times of day, while biking along the shore, driving, swimming and sitting on the sand helps me feel solidly connected to myself and to what is real and important.

We’re in a rented house right in Fish Creek and on my bike we are less than 6 minutes (yes, I timed it) from the entrance to the Sunset Trail in Peninsula State Park. We spend a lot of our time in Peninsula State Park and counting all members of the family who are with us for any part of the trip, we join the other 999,994 visitors to the park this summer.

The house we rented has been the perfect set-up for N in this phase of still-young-girlhood-and-now-a-teen life. There is a loft bedroom up a flight of stairs. The loft is her room and she keeps her stuff up there out of our sight and she stays up there for a few hours of “alone-time” at night after dinner and other times of day. From the living room I can hear her laughing while she watches silly you-tube videos and tv. Then she comes downstairs by her choice at about midnight (some nights well after I have gone to bed) to cuddle up and sleep. The teen and the young girl who needs her moms.

My sister, J, came by herself last Friday night for the weekend. Even more than Lake Michigan, I love being with her. We do our own thing which includes getting up earlier than the rest and heading out for a look at the water and decaf cappuccino from the nearby café. She is training for a half-marathon and last Saturday morning I biked with her on a ten-mile run/ride as her water carrier and sag wagon.

I have also fallen in love again with M on this trip. Not that I ever fell out of… but slowing down and being away from work has me able to feel why I loved her to begin with, why I love her now. We’ve been together so long now, have so many sweet memories of beach vacations together– with my sister and nephews and without, with daughter and before.

Tuesday was the 2nd of only two rainy and cool days. I woke up desperately fearful, worried about what is to become of me in terms of work. My job, which I want to leave, hopefully to regain some flexibility and resume mothering in the way I want to, ends December 31. But until I have something secured, I’m once again facing the possibility of unemployment. I’m scared and often hopeless about finding a right spot for myself. The combination of sexism and ageism aimed at women as we push well past 50 is fierce and it often feels as though those forces will win this battle and my desire for good work that I like and feel respected doing, will lose.

Those worries weighed heavily when I woke up Tuesday morning and I sat in the living room, twisting in my hard feelings. After a couple hours, as people were getting up, I figured that seeing Lake Michigan on a cool, windy, cloudy day and making my body work hard were the only ways out. So I biked alone to the state park and shore. I wasn’t exactly happy or hopeful, but I loved the dark gray choppy water, the wind, the hard work and loved being in my long-sleeved shirt, hoody and windbreaker. I arrived at Nicolet Bay calmer on the inside and spattered with gravel and dirt on the outside.

I know I have a battle ahead– against my own insecurities and against the real live sexism that will try to thwart me. I wish I could wage it with mighty Lake Michigan (and these particular people I love) a lot closer, but these two weeks are a start.

Tuesday & Wednesday–August 14-15

The days are so full and the iPhone is so small–I can do just these short daily entries with photos. I won’t write what I’ve been thinking about my (still somewhat new) job from here or about big, important issues of our times some of which have unfolded here in Wisconsin during the time of this trip. I will say I have had a good chance to get much closer to my hard-working sweetheart– a very good thing.

There is a County park on the Lake Michigan side which is thick pine forest at the edge with a beautiful white/ grey flat rock outcropping into a deeper and often bluer section of the lake. It is wilder, rougher than the parts of the shore where most of our time has been spent.

Tuesday we all caravanned there stopping at a farmers market on the way. Tuesday night we said goodbye to my sister and nephews and yesterday was a quieter day, with a visit for my mom and me to a weaver’s small gallery, a mothers (partner and me) and daughter bike ride, a little beach time all together and a bike ride home from the beach as the sun was setting– for just my partner and me while daughter and her grandmother drove home and cooked. And then dinner– with beautiful organic vegetables and cheese and my daughter’s (she’s quite a baker) cornbread. Forgive me if photos are out of order– still figuring out this WordPress iPhone application.

Lake Michigan study, August 14.

I wake up at about 5:00 or 5:30 a.m. each morning as it gets light. I can fall back to sleep but the view of the water out the window is like this– though sometimes it is pinker than today. I love this time of morning while the rest of the household is asleep and soon I will sleep again too. But first I get this early morning view.