The summer has gone by now... It slid silently — or not so silently — over the edge of the western horizon. Labor Day weekend has come and gone, leaving me a little sad to think of the changes that will surely come.

Traditionally, this weekend was set aside to reflect, remember and wonder what might have been and, of course, to celebrate the labor that brought us to wherever it was we were at that time. For my little brother, Douggie, and me, such celebrations always brought all our relatives together at Aunt Anne and Uncle Jack's house on the shores of Lake Megunticook, where they lived. Whenever my parents planned to be away for a few days or more, they asked Aunt Anne to take care of Doug and me. Anne seemed to be delighted with this arrangement, and we both loved living in her house. Since she no longer had children of her own, who needed her generous attention, and kept her company, she doted on us. Believe me when I tell you, she made THE most delicious chocolate peanut butter fudge in the whole state of Maine! (Our mother had an aversion to sweets, but Anne delighted in treating the two of us, and rescuing us both from our sugar deprivation.)

Because I remember vividly many of the stories Aunt Anne told me at the end of a busy summer day at the lake house, where she lived with Uncle Jack, and some of those stories happened right there at the same house, beside the same lake, under the same sky, that framed my own experience, I like to think that I knew all the aunts and uncles she knew when she was young, and I was but a twinkle in my father's eye. The more I hear about those dear people, and the more I write about them in the stories I tell, the closer I feel to them, and the more I wonder what it might be like if — somehow — they could all come back to that house on a Labor Day weekend, when we would all be there, too.

This will surely be a festive picnic for over three generations of Carters and Halls. There will be crepe paper streamers in wide red, white and blue loops, strung up between branches of the tall maple trees in front of the house, where the lawn slopes down to the edge of the lake. The decorations are a family tradition, and Uncle Jack, with his ladder and a pocket full of tacks, always does his best to carry it forward. He says he hopes it will instill in each of us a recognition that we all belong to a proud and vigorous country that has grown by the labor and love of countless sturdy souls who have gone before us, and a reminder that we will carry on.

A table will be set up with tasty snacks and cool drinks — lemonade for the young and a sturdier fruit punch bowl for the grown ups (not to be shared with the children!). There will be
baskets of crackers and potato chips and Aunt Lizzie's new and already fancier-than-anyone's dip. She'll be shy and reluctant to give out her recipe, because she will have made it up as she went along, using up all the left over stuff in her fridge — stuff that would never quite make it to the end-of-the-week casserole on Friday night.

After a a delicious lunch of Auntie Anne's genuine Southern Fried Chicken, with all the fixings (usually corn-on-the-cob, a cucumber salad and a tray of all kinds of sliced vegetables with a saucer of spicy mayonnaise to dip in) the kids will swim in the lake, and a few of the older boy cousins will take mischievous delight in up-ending a canoe full of grown ups, who might be just returning from a paddle across the lake. Uncles will curse as they roll into the cool water, reaching wildly for their extinguished pipes, amidst a frantic splashing and sputtering of annoyance. The aunts will tread water furiously in an attempt to keep their weekly hair-dos above ruination, and all the smaller kids, standing in the shallow water near the dock, will sputter, spit and laugh at the hilarious trick the big boys played on the grownups. Milton, Aunt Shannon's trusty Lab, will demonstrate the original dog paddle, as he heads back to the shore and safety, snuffling and snorting all the way.

Then, it will be time for dessert. Aunt Shannon will appear on the porch, carrying a huge watermelon, imported by hand on the train from the Deep South, which brought all those Carters and Halls and others to Maine for the summer. Uncle Ham will be standing by, brandishing a fearsome, large machete with which to cut the melon up into beautiful pink triangles.

All the canoe-wrecked passengers will have reached shore by then and will be scrambling up onto the rocks, clutching their wet clothes. The aunties wrapping their fleshy arms around their even fleshier bosoms, in an attempt not to reveal evidence of their nakedness. The uncles, meanwhile, will extend their soggy forearms toward the ladies, to help them up the rocky bank and onto the lawn. Dear Aunt Anne, all in a dither, will rush down from the house, carrying an armload of fresh towels, to her soaking-wet guests, and, gradually, everyone's irritation and discomfort will be reduced to laughter, as they all bite into the sweet, pink freshness of the melon slices.

All the children will take aggressive delight in the annual Watermelon Seed Spitting Contest. Uncle Hodding will preside and will judge the contestants. He will also be the donor of the First Prize for the "Spittingest Winner"— a shiny, new, silver dollar! All the kids — girls and boys — will line up behind a length of clothes line Uncle Jack found in the tool shed and stretched across the grass. He also pocketed a handful of golf tees, to mark the spot where each seed lands as the game proceeds down the row of cousins, one by one, with enthusiastic cheers and clapping from the sidelines.

Way in the background, in the shadows of the overhanging trees, a few of the uncles will probably be seen in a huddle, muttering to each other, and swapping loose change and bills of money, as they place bets on which of the family's kids will be this year's winner. But, of course, nobody will draw attention to this side event, especially the aunts, who will do their best to pretend it isn't happening. Little Tia will later tell her mother she heard Taunte LuLu whispering to Aunt Cora, "Just because we are celebrating Labor Day and the gathering of our family, there is NO call for staining the blessed event with the evil of gambling for ill gotten gains. That's all I have to say on the the matter. It's a shame!"

Uncle Hodding's deep voice will rise above the anticipation and boom out across the lawn:

"Ready, everyone? ... This is a trial run! Everybody gets to spit a practice spit!" ... “Get Set!" ... " Now: SPITT-T-T-T!!!!”

And the air will suddenly be filled with a hailstorm of small, round, black seeds, dripping with spit, and spiraling down, and down, to each individual spot in the grass. Uncle Jack will swoop down from the sidelines and press a small, red tee right next to the seed to mark the spot.

Then, as soon as Jack steps back to his place among the onlookers, everyone will be able to hear Uncle Hodding announce: "All right, folks! This time is for real! Will the first spitter step forward, please!" Then: " On your ready!"... "Get Set!" ... and finally ... "SPIT-T-T!!"

And the whole thing will repeat itself, down the line of kids toeing the clothes line, until it gets to be little Douggie's turn. He may not be the youngest of the cousins attending this celebration, but he surely is the smallest — and probably the cutest — of the assembled spitters. Most of the aunts will lean forward from their folding chairs to see him step up to the line. Each of them will surely gasp a deep breath of air and hold it, as a gesture of support and good cheer. A few of them might suck in her lower lip, as they all wait for the call.

"Ge-et Ready now! ... "Ge-et Set"

Everyone will be able to see Douggie take a big, big breath, and roll the watermelon seed around in his mouth, and then there will be Hodding's command: "Now: SPI-i-iT-T-T!!!"

And the aunties' breaths will sweep out of the bunch of them, in one big, but nearly silent “Whoosh!” Then, all of those who can actually see well enough, will see the small, black seed drop off the edge of Douggie's protruding lower lip and fall down onto the edge of the clean, white collar of his Sunday best dress-up shirt. He will look out at his audience, and seem a little worried about what might happen next, until Uncle Hodding will step forward and put a gentle hand on his shoulder, and say, " Don't worry about that, my boy. You did a good job
Douggie, and I am going to recommend that you be given Honorable Mention, and that will assure you first place in the line up for next year's Spitting Contest. That means that you will get to be the first one up to spit, and not the last. What do you think about that?"

Douggie will look up at him and smile his biggest smile.... and then look out at his bevy of beaming aunties, and make for them a deep, sweeping bow!

The aunts will clap and cheer, and some of them will doubtless dab a clean, white hankie at the corner of their wrinkled eye, as they feel little Douglas's relief and joy in the proceedings, and comment to each other that by the next year, he will have grown into one of the bigger children and will no longer be the chubby pink cherub they have watched grow from his beginning.

By then, the sun will have moved cautiously toward the West, and it will be time for all to return to their individual homes and camps in the area. As the grownups hustle around to tidy the whole place up before leaving for the day, the kids will most likely run down to the lake for one last, quick swim, and some horsing around. It will most likely be “the boys against the girls," and will have a lot to do with hiding articles of clothing, just to complicate the business of getting ready to leave. Undershirts, socks, sneakers might be seen hanging from any bush or wood pile. Sweatshirts, ball caps, life jackets, swimming trunks, and caps may be knotted up and squashed inside the large picnic baskets on the porch. There may be a hair brush under the nasturtiums in Aunt Anne's flower border, or a leather belt with a brass buckle wedged between the rocks in her garden wall.

Nobody ever "wins" that round of dirty tricks, but there will be hell to pay when all the parents have to wait for kids to find their belongings before anyone can actually leave. But hopefully, everyone will make their last round of sad goodbyes and thank yous, with a few hugs and kisses for every one of our "best aunts." And then it will be done. The sun will have gone down, and night will be moving in, making long shadows against our father's headlights.

From the back seat of our station wagon, I can imagine seeing a parade of lights winding down the long road to town and home, and I feel a creeping sadness in having to close the book on another summer at the lake. Of course there will be others, and I will surely see this same cast of characters in other stories I hope to write, but it will never be quite the same. And I, too, will have changed.

“That's just the way it is,” I say quietly to myself. And then, just for the heck of it, I respond: "Get ready ... Get set ... SPI-I-I-TTTT!!"

Mary Bok has always been interested in the magic of words as they relate and give voice to the thought that moves in each of us. As a child, she kept diaries and picture books that recorded something of her relationship to the world around her. Later, as a young adult, she wrote stories and poems which mirrored this same connectedness; and even later, in the early 1970's she began work with Ira Progoff, whose approach to journal keeping deepened her explorations.

Mary has led Proprioceptive Writing Workshops at elderhostels in Maine and New Hampshire, the International Women's Writing Guild conference in Canaan, N.Y., the Center for Health and Healing in Rockland and at her home in Camden.

Mary has been published in VillageSoup and has assembled a collection of her work entitled, "Unfolding Dreams."

Transformations
We tell stories.
We tell stories to make sense of our lives.
We tell stories to communicate our experience of being alive.
We tell stories in our own distinct voice. Our own unique rhythm and tonality.

Transformations is a weekly story-telling column. The stories are written by community members who are my students. Our stories are about family, love, loss and good times. We hope to make you laugh and cry. Maybe we will convince you to tell your stories.
— Kathrin Seitz, editor, and Cheryl Durbas, co-editor

"Everyone, when they get quiet, when they become desperately honest with themselves, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there." — Henry Miller

Kathrin Seitz teaches Method Writing in Rockport, New York City and Florida. She can be reached at kathrin@kathrinseitz.com. Cheryl Durbas is a freelance personal assistant in the Midcoast area. She can be reached at cheryldurbas@tidewater.net.