"The Book Club Meeting"

“The Book Club Meeting”

By Jodene Smedvig

Some moments in time seem to hang with such clarity. They feel like eternity and the peaceful pace of everyday life in slow motion—serenity holds time in one spot for a second.

Such is the moment on Marita’s dock during a book club meeting. The sun is out as white clouds drift in a sea of blue, dark and light shadows on the sparkling lake water—Haller Lake. The freeway sounds provide white noise, the pretence of ocean waves. The lily pads green spread out in a shoreline fantasy, curving gracefully, a pattern to swim around. The wood of the dock is worn grey with past rain—a few new, unworn planks. A spider lies in wait—his web a fortress crisscrossing the swimming ladder at the end of the dock. The shiny black crow plays gleefully in the unwatched yellow and red mango salsa left on the worn withered grey planked picnic table on shore. The purple fire weed shoots up boldly along the shore, defying authorities who say its lovely purpled flowers should be plucked out and banned from the lake. A silver rowboat with remnants of water not bailed is tied to the dock. And the bright sunny yellow blow-up raft is tight on its tether behind the rowboat.

It is Susan’s transportation to the book club. Susan in her Blue Heron embroidered shirt made by her sister to capture the essence of life on Haller Lake stands serene on the corner of the dock, looking toward the grassy slope of Marita’s tree-lined park yard that rolls gently uphill to her house porch.

Shaila in her bright red swim cap made her way, swimming across the lake to the book club meeting. She treads water as she softly greets Marita, me, Melinda, and Susan who stand entranced in time while her voice mesmerizes, accenting her place in the picture.

The babysitter next door retraces her steps back home, removing flip flops, holding them while wading through the water at the shoreline to her wrought iron gate where a younger sister plays and a brother swings by his tree house. This is summer, this is freedom, and this feels like eternity stretched in a moment in time, June 26, 2014 at 4:20 pm. We speak of duck relationships and incubated hatchings in a world that feels inside a bubble, refusing to be modernized as the rest of society that exists outside the bubble of calm on Haller Lake scurries in a frantic hurry, unaware of this peaceful feeling on a Haller Lake dock.

Just minutes before, Patricia had swooped up from the picnic table, her chopped dark green salad, her mushroom sensation, her raspberry chocolate drops, and empty cans of exotic sodas. She, like the forest itself, in green pushes her bike toward the gate leading to the outside world.

It was a great book club meeting that will linger on in the breeze of memory. If only I can remember the title of the book and recall the discussion—so entranced was I in the surrounding beauty of the day and the spirit of friendship made by a book shared.

I guess it doesn’t matter what was read and discussed but rather being a part of the shared universe in time under the great bubble of Haller Lake. No wonder it is “book club therapy.” What a gem to be a part of.

Jodene Smedvig is a retired teacher who loves to live in the Haller Lake area.

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