It is Sunday morning. I wake, not sure where I am.  I have to stop and think…Woodstock? Yes, Woodstock. Michael is nowhere around; I grab a wrap and stumble downstairs in my early morning fugue looking for coffee.  Michael comes walking in the kitchen with a broom and pail, telling me, “I need bleach. The front porch is filthy and it is the only place outside with a roof over it to sit and watch the rain.” Michael does love to be outside when it rains…his prescription for calming tranquility.

A steaming cup of coffee in hand, I walk outside…bucolic peace.  I love the backyard with its towering trees on all four sides and the old weathered table with room for six.  I wish friends lived nearby, I’d have them over for dinner, we’d eat outside and Michael would build a fire and we would talk and laugh into the night.

The morning chill chases me inside where I study my surroundings. The original tiny cottage has the most wonderful floors—wide wooden planks, softly gleaming; an ancient rock fireplace stained black with soot is at the end of the dining room.  The doors into the house and leading from the dining room into the kitchen and a downstairs bedroom are white washed—like the horizontal planked walls—and Dutch style. I love the antique upholstered chairs in the dining room and the table they surround…not necessarily a trestle style, but similar in its length and width…and charm and age.

Formerly owned by a composer from the 60’s who renovated, redesigned, lifted and expanded the original cottage; the current owner—who utilizes the house only as a rental—has filled it with musical memorabilia: old electric guitars, radios, phonographs.  CD players and large flat screen TV’s are in two bedrooms, while the living area contains one that goes on forever. There are giant three dimensional glittering stars everywhere.  Last night I asked him their significance—found items, he tells me—discarded on the streets of NYC, loaded into his car and brought here to fill the empty spaces.

It is Michael’s week to cook so I shouldn’t worry about shopping, but I have a list of cleaning products a mile long I’d like to purchase—this charming house in the seeming middle of the forest is old and wreaks with the smell of age and being closed up; the windows do open, but not wide. I’m going to have to rely on chemicals for freshness.  The nearest Target is in Kingston.  Michael says he’s ready, “Lets go.”…well, I’m not.  It takes a bit.

I have always complained about the homogenization of America, but as I walk into the familiar interior of Target, knowing where to find what, and sure they will have what I want, I decide it’s not so bad after all.

Back in the car, Michael asks me where the water is…I know he means big water…the river. “East I suppose,” I tell him.  We follow our noses, finding what we are looking for–not the Hudson, but Rondout Creek and the city harbor–with no place to park, until finally someone leaves and Michael backs into the vacated space.

We walk toward the noise and hubbub of a Sunday in the park that edges the Hudson River. A tour boat is about to depart.  I grab a brochure. Rainbows of water stream skyward—it is September 11 and I didn’t even realize it, we have lost all sense of time and dates and news—and there is a commemoration celebration going on in the harbor. The fire-boat John J. Harvey has come from New York City harbor to mark this fifteenth anniversary of a day so many people will never forget. It makes me sad to remember and grateful to be here now.

At home I unpack my purchases, finding a special place for cleaning supplies.  Michael grabs the bleach. I spray Fabreze everywhere.

6 p.m. finds us walking down a gravel path toward the award winning Bear Café, where we are seated at a table overlooking a bubbling brook. I order seafood for both appetizer and entrée while Michael orders a tomato and goat cheese salad and oven roasted chicken. We don’t want the evening to end, so we say yes to coffee.  It is rich and dark and strong.

It is two o’clock in the morning.  I toss.  I turn.  I shouldn’t have ordered the coffee.

Signs of the good life…dregs from late afternoon happy hours.