Eleven years ago, my husband Bill and I relocated our lives to the brink of a force of Nature. Our new home grew from a boathouse that had been planted on this spot in the early 20th century. It is ten yards—Count ’em: Ten!— from the shore of Lake Erie.
Erie is beautiful, compelling, threatening, raging by turns. Always impossible to ignore. We’ve stopped jumping every time a breaking wave shakes the house. We don’t get too excited anymore when the wind makes the windows belly in so that whatever’s reflected there expands, too. (It’s spooky when your living room bulges at you.) We always try to show some respect. And we never forget that it’s an honor to live here.
Allie Harper, the narrator of Too Lucky To Live, also moved from Shaker Heights to the brink of Erie about two years before her story begins. Here’s what she says about her Lake E.
“The night air was warm and heavy, weighed down by recent rains and the proximity of the lake. I could hear it, my lake, heaving away, down across the lawns in the darkness, and smell its mossy perfume. I wanted to go stand on its shore, raise my arms and invoke its power to protect me. That’s how I feel about Lake Erie. Like it is the earthly deputy of God.”
When I made a blog for myself, I called it Lake E. A writer writes. She can’t stop herself. I wanted to capture what life was like for me here, where my backyard stretches all the way to Canada, and every new moment erases the moment before. Life is moment-to-moment no matter where you are, but a great lake slaps you in the face with that. Now, gulls. Now mist. Now, eagle. Now, rain. Now, OMG, boats, sunset, the sequin sparkle of summer, the ice field of winter. Now. Now. Now. Mere memory isn’t up to that challenge. So I write things down. And reading what I wrote brings them back so I can see them again.
I write about Cleveland, too. I’ll put those stories here and in my novels. CLE changes you if you let it. I don’t pretend to know 1/millionth of its stories or its souls, but I flat-out admire it. Just can’t help myself. IMHO, Cleveland could put Paris to shame with its unbridled insouciance. In your face. Upside your head. Straight to your heart. Take it or leave it. When Allie says, “Tough town, Cleveland,” you can hear the stubborn pride that’s mixed in there with her outrage.
You hear it, too, when Allie reports from the Rock Hall,
“I herded my small tour group up a flight of stairs and out onto the sweeping plaza where the Cleveland skyline glared down on us as if we could never worship it enough to make it feel good about itself.”
I also write about writing because I have always promised myself that if I EVER got published, I’d be a supporter of writers and writing and wannabes and the “not-even-confident-enough-to-admit-I’m-a-wannabe’ wannabes. Anne Lamott, Elizabeth Gilbert, Julia Cameron were that for me, and I vowed I’d pay it forward, although not in a fraction of the stellar manner of that awe-inspiring trio. I have met so many generous writers on my journey and they have made my path sweet in a way I’d never predicted. So thoughts about writing, and being a friend to writers—I hope to put that here.
So I’ll just call this “Blog” now in my home page menu. (Kinda like a dog named “Dog,” huh?) I’m excited to be here at the beginning of something else new.
