Sunday, June 18, 2006

Search for a slamming screen door

I wrote this a couple weeks ago and never posted it.....
I've become a fan of Bill Bryson in the last few years. In his book Notes From a Big Country he writes about his readjustment to American culture after living in England for over 20 years. I think I'll reread it this summer. In one chapter he writes about the sweet sound of a slamming screen door in the summertime. The kind of door with a wooden frame that creaks as it opens and closes. Maybe he says that you can only find these doors in America, I don't know. But I never ran across one in the UK. I remember the same sound from my childhood summers at the my grandparents lake house in northern Michigan. Hearing that sound usually meant that Grandpa was done cleaning the fish for dinner. I can imagine it now.....
I won't make it up north to my grandparents house this summer. But I'll search high and low for the slamming screen door and revel in the memories it invokes. I'll sit nearby and drink a cold glass of lemonade and drink in the sun.

And for the rest of the story......
IT didn't take me long to find my screen door and the good news is that it is on my house!!!! I'm in the process of moving into Stacy's guest house. I've decided to keep calling it the guest house in hopes that it will make me feel like I'm always on holiday. And now every time I enter or leave the house I will hear that beautiful creak and soft slam of the screen door. Sheer joy. Plenty of sun here, now I need to find some lemonade!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So glad to hear you are back. I'm going to St. Louis for a wedding then to DC for an alumni event. I'll call you when I land and get my head screwed on again. I look forward to hearing about your "lake and safe place" experience. I'm so glad that you are home and that I live here now to be with you.

Anonymous said...

Bizzarely we had screen doors when we lived in the frozen wastes of the north in Lochinver!