Scene: Mamie and Solly are walking home from dinner along a two-track in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula with their two dogs respectively prancing or being dragged along on leashes. Light discussion abounds.
Mamie: Beautiful trees, Solly. And the pinesap smells nice. We walking so fast on the way to dinner that we couldn’t even look around.
Solly (sniffling): Don’t forget the wildflowers, Mamie. Even the dogs are sneezing.
M (hearing birds chirping): Nice to have a more leisurely walk back to the cabin. Below freezing tonight. Too cold to use our camper.
S (breathing hard): I’m exhausted. How are you even vertical, let alone piloting a squeaking stroller through this underbrush? We’ve worked harder on this vacation, helping people we’re visiting, than we did while employed.
M (slowing for Solly to catch his breath): I worked hard while employed. Now I just work for me and us.
S: The work assigned to “us” seems to include jobs that only I can do.
M: It’s not just that you should do these jobs; it’s that, of the two of us, you’re the only one who knows how to do them. I don’t know how to fix a damaged shade, replace missing window frame fragments, shut off our hostess’s car’s ding-ding-ding, or replace rotten back steps. So, I delegated those to you.
S (breathing deeply): I trashed the shade and installed a gently used mini-blind; wood-puttied and white-duct-taped the broken frame; silenced the ding-ding-ding by digging a lodged pebble out of the seat belt buckle so the clasp would latch; and installed two new steps.
M: Solly, you’re a highly effective person. I was right to delegate. And we’re not in the underbrush. We’re walking along the two-track.
S: Two-track? What’s that, Mamie?
M: It’s the parallel, two-line, dirt-and-gravel track, carved by ATV tires traversing a rutted path through the woods repeatedly over time.
S: I’ve never heard this Upper Peninsula phrase “two-track” before. The tires, traveling this road less taken, trod it long enough to kill much of the grass from cabin to paved road.
M: Hyperbole, your name is Solly. I deduced “two-track” from that nice man thinking he should teach me how to back up and park our camper, at least until he started yelling.
S: Never having been to this geographical backwater, how did you know from where to whence this path led?
M (grinning widely): Love it when you gabble in garbled Ye Olde English. Back-up man told me earlier that the two-track emerged at the restaurant. We exercised the dogs simultaneously with wandering through the woods looking for dinner. Efficient.
S: Is that why you brought the stroller? So, you could literally carry out dinner?
M (dogs walking and huffing): No, Solly. I brought the stroller in case the older dog had a sit-down strike, and I had to schlep him back to the cabin.
S: Did you know there was graffiti in the restaurant’s men’s bathroom? Please stay seated until the performance is done.
M: The ladies’ bathroom had motorcycle gang charity participant stickers on the mirrors.
S: Mamie, I won’t say what else was written on the walls.
M: I love building new vocabulary.
S: Those new words are what I’m afraid of hearing you use.
M (pointing): There. The cabin. Whose inside looks more coordinated than our own house, even though I’ve been working on that since 1986.
S: Your taste has fluctuated like a sine wave since we met.
M: We’re evolving, Solly, not static. The cabin’s living room area has huge windows on three sides. I’d love to have that light in our house.
S: Mamie, if we had huge windows on three sides of our living room, that would remove a load-bearing wall. The living room would collapse.
M: Maybe we should just get another lamp instead. The point? To have more light.
S (brushing a stray leaf from Mamie’s sleeve): We already have it. You light up my life.
M (reflectively): We’re here together, Solly, in the U.P. We light ourselves up.
S (smiling): I wouldn’t have it any other way.
About the author: Linda Lemery llemery@gmail.com welcomes reader comments.
