First Light

Day 20 and here is my task for the Rise and Write daily prompt.  I am a day late and will be doing two today and getting caught up. I'm going to try another fiction take, building on my last short story. Here is the prompt: Write about a summer day – a particular one or a fictional one. Where are you (or where is your character)? What’s the weather is like? What are you doing or wanting to do? Are there people around you, or are you alone? Write about your thoughts and feelings on that summer day.

Kara and her family had another week left to spend at her mother's cabin in Minnesota.  Actually Paul, her husband ,and Brent her son would be leaving in three days to prepare for college.  Paul had a new crew of teaching assistants and PhD candidates to acclimate, and Brent would be starting his senior year on the other side of the state.  He had friends he still wanted to see, so he and Paul would be flying home, where Kara would take her time, stopping at a different friend's home on the way back. As was normal, Kara was up early, with first light, not wanting to miss a moment of the solitude the early morning lake brings before the boats and motor toys come out.  This particular morning was an incredibly glorious gift.  At 6:30, it was already warm, and she knew the day would get steamy.  Later she would find a spot in the shade, surround herself with a magazine or two, the Susan Shreve book she was reading, and a small cooler that held provisions to refuel her ice tea cravings.  

Now, she through on her swim suit under a pair of khaki cargo shorts, a tank top and a baseball cap, grabbed an apple for herself and a couple doggie treats for Kota, and headed to the canoe rack.  Kota, their eight year old German Shepherd, was not fond of swimming particularly, but he loved riding along in the canoe.  He would settle in for the first ten minutes of paddling, but as he acclimated his water legs, he would shift to the front of the canoe, and assume the positron of crew leader, while Kara paddled sleekly and elegantly, gilding the  small canoe through the water. At the far end of the small lake, out of view form her mother's cabin and in a spot where the incline up to the main road was too steep for cabins on the shoreline, she paused to eat her apple, and enjoy the wooded view.  Kota sat don again, expecting his first treat.  He wouldn't get the other until they were back home. 

There, Kara's mind pondered the events of the last 10 days.  They had packed the jeep with stuff for five people, and a dog, and made an ambitious two day drive, stopping midway at a camp site in Indiana where they met friends for one night, before finishing the trip and arriving late.  most slept in the next morning, but not Kara.  She allowed herself naps in the summer as the nights around the fire got late, and she wasn't going to sleep away the morning solitude. Since learning her brother and his family were going to be moving into the cabin. at least for the short term, while he attempted to get his finances in order, she wondered if coming home to the cabin would remain the same.  It sounded like her brother was not only starting from scratch repairing the damage he caused his own finances with his failed business deal, but he had potentially jeopardized his mother's financial security, since their father had invested heavily before he passed away in the venture. She would probably really know very little; her mother never confided in her in such things, having put Kara in a lifelong box of being a child.No, it was Jim her mother had turned to to help sort all the financial details after her father died while  Kara was to play hostess and personal secretary for the social side of her mothers life. 

Kara was one to have multiple plans and solutions going on in her head at all times.  While the family she grew up in thought of her as simple, unambitious, and not worldly, her own family, and Paul's saw her as the problem solver. It was part of her calm demeanor to never fall apart in the the face of adversity, real or potential, but to visualize scenarios and actions and outcomes. She knew she would have several  options developed by the end of her canoe ride should the bottom fall out for her mother, if anyone would care to ask her. 

Kara looked at the wooded area above the lake, seeing the first hints of fall color, even though it was only early August. As much as she loved the fall colors of her family lake home and her home in New England, she wasn't ready for fall yet. She let the rising sun heat up her face, her legs, and her arms.  She soaked it all in. She started her paddling again, seeing the  lake community slowly coming awake as she paddled by each cabin.  There were a few fishing boats out, still and silent, their masters lazily holding rods draped over the sides of the boat. She said a silent prayer that all would work out for her brother and his family, and more so that this feeling of peace and serenity would last.