Cape Cod House

For the past 11 years or so, we've been spending a week on Cape Cod each summer with our friends the Whalen-Browns. For the last 8 years, we've rented the same small house in Brewster from friends of theirs, for a great price.

Each year when we return, the house has gotten smaller. My evidence: there's a small window (air vent, really) that the kids all used to make a game of crawling through each year. Then, one year, Jonah wouldn't fit. Then, Alex and Emma wouldn't fit. This year, Carolina barely fit. I'm betting than in another year or two, the window will have closed up altogether.

I think often about places I'm familiar with that I don't visit frequently, and how they exist independently of me. For example, Niagara Falls. If you've every been there, you were overwhelmed with the sheer volume of water that is continuously getting dumped over that cliff. Every once in a while, I think about Niagara Falls and how that water has been rushing since the last time I saw it or thought about it, 24 hours a day, every single second.

The same is true of the Dog. Not the flowing water part, but the "he exists without me" part. If I'm teaching a class, I'll sometimes remember the Dog, sitting at home on his chair, or on his couch, or on my bed (bad dog!). Then, when I get home, I imagine that he's been thinking of me in the same way. Judging from the way he acts, though, I'm pretty sure he doesn't remember who I am. Sort of a selective dementia.