A guest writer?

Let's give it up for our guest writer. The hostest with the mostest. Bev Sharritt!!!!!

Take care

Roger

“North or south?. . . north or south?” Roger moaned from the bed in the vacation rental house in an undisclosed small town on the shores of Lake Michigan.

10 hours earlier:

                “Was that your phone, Grace?” I asked, as we lay on the beach. 

She checked, and replied, “missed call from dad.” We had planned a longer excursion to the lovely Lake Michigan sands today, involving the need for someone to drive with gear: a cooler with lunch, chairs, a pirate kite, etc. . .  I volunteered to drive, and Grace and her 3 college friends who met us here decided to walk to the lighthouse then find the spot that I had staked out. Roger decided to go back to bed, and join us even later.

We had discussed geography over dinner the night before.  As an orientation and mobility instructor for the blind I have become more aware of cardinal directions than I used to be.  Growing up, I remember being amazed by my sister Patty’s ability to find her way anywhere after being there just once. She would ask my mom if we were going to be going by the pool on the way to Emma Lou’s or by Robin Hood? How did she know these things? We lived on a dairy farm on a perfectly flat, perfectly square grid for miles around.  In the summer, we would ride the 5 miles to North Manchester, and, once there, I would always let her lead, not always sure which way to turn.  In my early years, my mom remembers me saying, “Moso home,” when we would be ½ mile or so from the farm—not a huge radius of orientation, but a cute enough phrase, that it is still repeated as we approach home from anywhere.

After two  field classes of under-the-blind-fold training to prepare me to teach clients with blindness and low vision how to move about a city independently, I had been forced to engage this part of my brain. At the end of these two summers, I felt confident that I could lead even Patty across an Indianapolis street, literally, blind-folded.

So we had talked about where to meet.  South of the lighthouse.  Grace had no idea which way this was, “right or left facing the lighthouse?”

“That depends on if you are looking at the lighthouse from land or a boat,” I answered. She was not impressed with my best O&M instructor guided discovery methods.  “Lake Michigan is west of the beach. Does that help?” I said. Her eyes clouded over as she looked to her friends to see if any of them had an Aunt Patty kind of brain.  Her boyfriend, Chris, nodded confidently, and she looked relieved that she wouldn’t have to be lead bike.

After setting up camp, and only one more “left or right?” phone call from Grace, the college kids made it to our location. We had a nice cucumber sandwich and Twizzler lunch and awaited Roger’s arrival. He had been present, albeit silent in the discussion the night before, but I was confident that he knew where to look—two killer stair cases south of the lighthouse.

 Roger grew up on a dairy farm, as I did, but nestled in some rare Indiana hills of Madison County, and bordered by the reckless curves of Fall Creek, Reformatory Road, and prison escape routes. Even today, we advise folks not to use their GPS to find us, because it inevitably leads them to an unexpected tour of  the odd wilderness between Fortville and Geist or the odd wilderness of the state Reformatory.  Roger knows his cardinal directions, but the chaos of his surroundings in his formative years caused him to develop phrases like, “on up from there”, “towards the secret garden field”, and, our family favorite, “over the hill”.

So after the missed call from him to Grace’s phone I decided to pull out my phone. Dang. It was dead again, trying so hard to get a signal near the lake. I grabbed Grace’s phone and headed up the dune to the 75 steps, and on to the flow of electrons above. Three broken attempts later, I found out that he had headed south from the lighthouse, had not seen us (“were you guys over the hill?” he asked), and had given up and tried north. Given that there is a canal separating north from south, he was an hour and a half into his sandy walk and would be another 45 minutes to reverse to the lighthouse, head east to get to the bridge over the canal, then back to where we promised we’d all be vertical and visible.

This day was supposed to be a rest day for Roger, as you know, if you have been reading about his high-mileage bike treks to celebrate the first day of the rest of his summer vacation. He was smiling weakly as he approached. Thank God it was overcast and he had a shirt on, because we had hoarded the sunscreen. We gave him what we could find in the cooler:  the few last cucumber  sandwiches, a string cheese,  and some chips. Then he promptly collapsed on the sand. We went home a couple of hours later. He made it through dinner, then headed upstairs with a bottle of Tylenol. 

We called up the stairs as we were headed out to Sherman’s creamery for the 4^th time this week to  try “carmel, carmel, carmel” instead of “chocolated covered pretzel” (a fabulous mix of sweet and salty). Roger said that he wouldn’t be going.

This was more serious than I thought. I walked upstairs.

“north or south? . . . north or south?”

I went up to sit on the side of the bed,   “you o.k.?”

“Not sure. . . a little queasy. . . maybe dehydration. . . maybe just worn out.”

“Can we bring you anything?”

“A banana.” (Serious indeed, as he did not follow the word  banana with the word split.)

I headed back down to catch up with the teens and heard my phone beeping from where I had plugged it in to charge. There were 3 messages in my inbox, each of which read simply, “north or south”.