More Duncan!

Oh!  Duncan the Dog!

Yesterday's post told the story of how I stopped to pat a Lab named "Duncan" and met the new owners of our family cottage--which they purchased in 1978.  Through them, I was invited back to see the cottage that was in our family since the 1890's and in which I had spent my boyhood summers.  Talk about opening the lost world!   

So, I wanted to say "thank you" for the invitation.  I purchased a watercolor print of the cottage and made a special visit on the day I left for home.  Nobody was home so I left it on their porch.

As I left the cottage, the second marvelous opportunity came my way.  Two carpenters were trying to save the old boathouse with a complete renovation.  (You can't tear anything down and rebuild-you renovate what's already there!)  They told me the boathouse had not been used, never opened since "way back when they got it."  

 I could not believe my good fortune!  Here I was just at the time they were going to open the old boathouse--and frankly, I hoped it would not fall apart.  The doors swung open and blew me back with years of memories before me. It was all there--all my fish'n stuff right where it was always kept--poles, buckets, bait basket, spear, oar locks. It was all there, all preserved.  If you look carefully, just to the left of the ladder and on the wall, sits my "old pal fishing bucket." 

Okay, what's going on here?  There is the easy to understand level--I love dogs, so did they--and we met over the dog.  The random chances were so small!

Perhaps the bigger truth is "care for others" opened unexpected opportunities.  They gave me a marvelous gift of inviting me to the cottage.  I returned with a gift for them.  The greater gift then opened with the boathouse.

There is also the glorious way we humans invest ourselves in the places we have lived and the things we use which are special to us.  That pile of junk lying there?  That's me! 

And then you wonder.  Bread and Wine, Body and Blood.  Outward signs of an invisible Life always with us.  Not a memory of the past, but the past always become the present.