Chapter 1

I think my earliest clear memory is of fog. When I was little we lived in a small town on the shore of Lake Michigan. We didn’t live right on the lake, but it wasn’t far away. There was a small park on the shore about a half mile from our house. Often we would walk to this park - maybe for a picnic or for me to play on the sand or just for a nice walk. The first clear memory I can recall was when I was about three. We - my mom, my dad and me - had walked down to the park one night after supper. It was probably in late summer or early fall. All I can remember for sure was that it was warm out. I played on the sand while my parents sat and talked nearby. When the sun set we began to get ready to head back home. I remember seeing the fog start to roll in from the lake while we were gathering our things and when we started the walk back, it had begun to come ashore and flow around us. Soon it blanketed everything and it was like walking in a gray world. I was between my mom and dad, each holding onto one of my hands, and beyond them I could see nothing else except an occasional street lamp as we passed by. I think they must have thought that I might be frightened by the fog, but I remember I definitely wasn’t. No, it was an exciting new experience. I loved the feeling of the touch of the damp air on my skin and being wrapped in the gray mist, the rest of the world shut out, I even remember when I went to bed that night, after my mom and dad had left the room, I got up and went to the window to look out at the wondrous world of silent, gray mist with the few diffused glowing spots of nearby lights.

As I grew older I came to love the fog even more, and not just the fog itself. There was a fog horn not too far off and on misty nights I could hear its unique, coded call telling any ships where they were and to stay clear of the rocks near the shore. By the time I was thirteen or fourteen, often at night when the fog rolled in and the deep voice of the horn began to send forth its warning, I would lie in bed and just listen. I could see through my window that the world had been shrouded in gray, the mist muffling any sounds but still letting the low tones of the fog horn make their way through. I can’t really exactly describe it, but the sound of the horn left a strange feeling, not of sadness or of loneliness as one might imagine, but rather one of contentment and, yes, of security….a warm, safe feeling. I really have no idea why that deep, lonesome sound should induce such opposite feelings, but it always did.

But my experiences with fog weren’t limited to bedtime. With the park so close, my friends and I often went there to play. The park had a sand area on the shore but it also had a nice section of thick woods. There were trails going through this but there were also a lot of areas off the trails. Places with trees to be climbed and hollows to hide in. From the time I was much younger - probably eight or so - a bunch of us would often go down to the park to play. We might just play in the sand, building castles and such, or we might take to the woods for hide and seek. By the time we were eleven or twelve we could even go swimming by ourselves as long as the weather was good, the waves small, and no storms expected. If the fog rolled in we had to leave the water but we could still stay on the beach or in the woods. Generally it was the woods. Hide and seek in the woods, filled with the thick, damp, gray blanket, was much more interesting than in clear conditions.

By the time I was a teenager, it was quite common for several of us to spend a sunny Saturday at the park. We’d take a picnic lunch and swim or just lie in the sun and talk, frequently about boys. In fact, I think one of the real reasons we liked to head to the park was to wear our bathing suits and be seen by the boys.