We spent the past week going back and forth to the lake. It was supposed to be a quiet week, but life has a way of pulling us into its force without giving us directions. We were sort-of prepared for chaos. We knew my daughter would have morning sessions for her summer program to attend. Then there was work. She trying to fill in for the weeks she would be missing during her three weeks residence, plus my scattered yoga classes, and my husband’s half-day he didn’t want to give up.

On Wednesday, the day when no one had anything to do beyond noontime, the sky decided to dance rain while the fridge went on vacation. It could have been worse. We were home anyway, as who wants to water ski in a rainstorm?

As I shoveled bags of frozen food into coolers I began to think about fortune. How lucky we were to be home to save this food that would surely perish in a day or two if it had warmed, with our fridge, to room temperature in summer. The fact that we had so much food to save only reinforced our fortune.

The modern convenience whose generator had run its course also brought to mind dependence. I do not can. I freeze. My tiny garden has yet to yield the bulk of its bounty for the season. While I was digging through the thawing treasures in the freezer box, I found three bones filled with peanut butter banana ice cream. Zelda, realizing she had hit the treats jackpot decided she’d better save one for later. Within seconds, half my crop of ready-to-be-picked lettuce and two budding pepper plants disappeared into the dirt along with a bone.

Yet, how fortunate I was to have peppers and lettuce from the grocery store. Grown by someone else. How dependent I was. How interdependent we all are…

It can be an uncomfortable state to be in, this state of interdependence, but I’m not sure it has to be. The next morning I found myself in bed thinking about how the big can appear small and the small big, depending upon perspective. The Earth, from the scale of the universe, a mere dot orbiting a tiny sun that will eventually burn out, holding our all of our breath in check. And how very few of us will ever emerge out of its atmosphere to take in the vast expanse beyond our Earthly existence.

Back at the lake, I watched dragonflies emerge from their nymph stage of life. Ugly prehistoric brown bugs emerging into exquisite winged beings. Tiny dragons. Magic in corporeal form. And here I was, sitting at the edge of the womb of the lake, watching beauty being birthed. Watching, without seeing, the force of life propelling the push into existence.