To the Lighthouse

I set out to visit the Grosse Point lighthouse in Evanston today. Kate went a few days ago with her husband and posted pictures on her blog. Her pictures display a place grand, remote, and shrouded in love. Their smiles cover up their secret, which is whatever it is that makes them so happy to be together and in love.

I was going to bake an apple pie, but I found myself putting on my coat and scarf. I had to go to the lighthouse first.

It takes an hour on public transit to get to the lighthouse. I bought a coffee and brought my book, Milan Kundera's Identity. It is an intelligent, erotic story about a couple as they grow distant and unfamiliar to each other, misunderstanding the other's intentions at nearly every step.

I finished Jane Eyre yesterday. It made me wonder if Charlotte Bronte ever married. At the end, Jane says:

"I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blest--blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband's life as fully as he is mine. No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am; ever more absolutely bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh."

Kundera's protagonist provides a sharp contrast:

"Love as an exaltation of two individuals, love as fidelity, passionate attachment to a single person--no, that doesn't exist. And if it does exist, it is only as self-punishment, willful blindness, escape into a monastery. She tells herself that even if it does exist, love ought not to exist."

On the walk from the el stop to the beach I felt oppressed by the largeness and the beauty of the Evanston homes on either side of me. I felt acutely that I would not end up in a place like that, and it made me depressed. I imagined living out my days in a tiny apartment in a city. I missed my family, and Kentucky.

When I wasn't expecting it, the lighthouse was there in front of me. Once there, I found I didn't care to look at it for long. I walked around and towards the lake, immense, crashing, and beautiful through the twisted black branches of the bare trees. I walked out on the sand and stared at the water. Being on the lake reminded me of my first summer in Chicago. Once, during a terrible storm, I walked out to the edge of a barrier and stood there as the waves crashed around me, reckless, alone, and free. The next day we heard about a Northwestern student who had been swept into the lake and drowned, and I wondered if he had gone out like me, to push his limits, to dare himself.

Standing on the dirty sand, blocks of ice to my left and the blue-gray water before me, I started laughing. I was so happy to be here, alone. I laughed like a crazy person, without real mirth but loving the sensation. I faced the lake and I started singing an old disco song about picking up the pieces and standing up, strong and defiant.

I walked back to the el, not feeling oppressed by the houses anymore. I remembered: My uncle at the lake after his son's graduation; Christopher's story of his baptismal dip in Lake Erie after his last breakup; and my dad and me having lobster bisque at a tavern--he was telling me that life is like water, and sometimes you're up at the crest of a wave and sometimes you're just even, but there are always times when it rises up again.

I went home. The feeling of freedom and elation didn't last once inside, and I made the pie with fury and bitterness. As I rolled out the dough and the butter kept sticking to the rolling pin and I just couldn't get it right, I felt like I was going to have a nervous breakdown. But when I finally got it and was sprinkling the sugar and spice mixture onto the apples, the smell rose up and suddenly I was in my grandmother's house. It was unbidden and I couldn't think where or when the memory was coming from. I imagined her making pies. I imagine to her it was more a matter of routine. Of course, somewhere inside her she did it out of love for her family, but it was because it was just the thing one did. You were a grandmother, you were a woman, so you made pies for your family. No big deal. It wasn't an event for her. It's just a pie.

The pie just came out of the oven, bubbling. It smells sweet and delicious, and I'm going to share it with people I care about.