The lake is calm, and the winds have ceased to blow for today.

It has been a cool and windy July so far on the lake, almost spring-like, and the pace of life here has once again been a gift I cannot adequately describe in words. The phone does not ring, there is no e-mail to check, there are no cars. The children wander out into the common and find others to play with, the grown-ups don't worry, and there is laughter everywhere. 

Today Aoife cut her foot in the lake on a mussel shell. She was bleeding everywhere, and as I carried her back to the house, she buried her little face in my shoulder, sniffling.

"And I'm also a little sad about Charlotte," she said. 

This is what it's like for me, too. If I get sad about anything, or mad, it always all comes back to Charlotte.

And by-the-by? There is a new baby up here, the child of some new renters, named Charlotte. She cries sometimes and her mother is too busy to pick her up, and it's all I can do to not go and scoop up her sweet, blue eyed little self and take her home. 

I had to tell her mother, of course, the moment she told me her name. I haven't told her the whole story yet, though, and I'm sure she's insatiably curious to know WHAT HAPPENED. But she'd never dare to ask, would she. That's my story to tell. 

My borrowed laptop is running out of juice, the mosquitoes are biting me outside the vacant cottage I'm pirating the wireless from, and the kids are ready to be tucked into their beds for a long summer's rest. I miss this world, miss writing and take photos and see scenes every day that belong here on my place, but I am cherishing as well the ability to be away from the screen and the isolation of the computer. It is refreshing and kind to the soul.