“Do you believe in god Brenda?”

Donna, my new neighbor, is sitting on my back deck. My husband invited her to join us for a ride on our pontoon boat on a perfect 65-degree Sunday. John likes to be neighborly – you never know when you might need to borrow something or call in a favor. Being neighborly for me is a wave and a nod, not inviting the born-again Christian into my home to point out my wayward ways.

Donna has brassy blonde hair and a lit cigarette in her hand. Her voice flows and meanders, like the mighty Mississippi just a few miles away. She had been a bus driver for eighteen years and lost her husband two years earlier but continued to live in their lake house with red, white and blue pinwheels piercing the lawn. Most mornings, she sits alone on her front stoop, cupping her coffee, studying the ground. I can only assume she missed her Glenn.

“I was raised Catholic,” I say cautiously, monitoring Donna’s expression. Brown age spots like a connect-the-dot puzzle, speckle the side of her face. I logged in all the big sacraments, but my church going days are over.

I’ve noticed that in Missouri, people bless you about as often as they build massive civic center-sized churches with bold names like UPLIFT, and REBIRTH. Just last week, while buying a coffee, the clerk smiled and said, “Bless you, my sister.” I simply raised my coffee cup in a cheerful salute and walked away.

“I believe there’s a heaven and a place for me there,” Donna preaches, looking up to the sky.

Heaven, I think to myself. That is a nice idea. Who doesn’t dream of a happy place where you can meet up with your lost loved ones. I wish my dad was sitting on the deck of my lake house talking to me rather than Donna.

Donna blinks and proceeds to talk about how she loves her country and worries about her daughter living in California with all those illegals running around, “I told my daughter she needs to get some mace or a gun. I don’t think that governor allows guns in his state.”

I sigh and point out, “If you have the right permit, you can …” My voice trails off while Donna talks over me.

I don’t dare mention that I grew up in Massachusetts. Some neighbors might worry about an east coast elite living nearby and I’d be branded with a Scarlett letter A on my chest like poor Hester Prynne. I’d be scorned and shunned, which frankly, sounds pretty good to me. Did I share too much with Donna?  I look out over the lake, hoping to see the lone, still heron standing on one leg like a gray statue.

John invites us down to the boat and we set off on our slow journey, puttering around the circumference of the lake. The pontoon is set for fishing, with a trolling motor on the front and two casting chairs. Donna is sitting at the back, taking a drag from her cigarette. She smiles, tilting her face to the sun. Another pontoon floats by, and neighbors wave. Was it Gary and Sherry, or Bruce and Karen, or maybe that other good-ole-what’s-his-name we met at the chili dump over the summer? Donna kept talking about her volunteer work collecting toys and personal hygiene products for 30 foster kids. Her extra bedroom is stockpiled with wrapped Christmas presents. Finally, she asks me a question.

“How old a girl are you Brenda?”

I grip the casting chair I’m sitting on and spin around to face her, pulling my hair away from my mouth, “Fifty-five.”

“No kidding, we’re the same age! I am fifty-six!”

My son Shawn thought Donna was in her seventies.  I smile at the thought of him and rub the side of my face wondering if she can make out my connect-the-dots.

The lake was supposed to be my refuge from the world and all its noise. The lake was going to be my sanctuary to privately endure my spiraling midlife, empty-nest mental breakdown. The lake was meant to be a nondenominational, nonpolitical, noise free respite.

I was fine with whistling birds, the flap of the heron’s wings, the splash of a turtle diving off a log, a gaggle of geese flapping across the lake and a back flipping catfish, but I was not in the market for any kind of person, red or blue, agnostic or religious and all the noise that came with them.

We return Donna to shore and say goodbye, and I retreat to the deck with John.

“What’s the matter,” a question my husband asks often.

I give him a shrug and sigh, “Nothing.”

I don’t know what’s wrong, other than that I just want to be quiet and sit. I don’t want to listen; I don’t want to speak. I just want to be. Finally, I say, “Everyone is different here.”

“No, they are not. You have Trumpers in New England too. We don’t have to have Donna back on the boat again, it was just a onetime thing.”

It’s not political for me, and it wasn’t really about Donna. And maybe it’s not that the people are or that life is different here. Maybe life is just different…period. My life feels foreign to me. I am certain if I was still in Connecticut, I would feel the same – an unsettled stirring, a need to pace back and forth, a search for something but not certain what that something is supposed to be.

“I guess I miss Shawn,” I say, feeling a little weepy. Our son is now in college. His bed is always made, his clothes hung up, his extra toiletries under the sink. No more banging on the door telling him a 30-minute shower was sufficient. I missed his long arm hanging over my shoulders, the smell of his head, his presence. Donna, the lake house neighbors, the new job, the city flat, the new day to day were not a worthy replacement.

A red cardinal is fluttering in a bush. It’s the first real cardinal I have seen not emblazoned on a t shirt or flag in the Midwest. My phone lights up and it is Shawn.

“What’s going on?” he asks.

“Took Donna for a boat ride today.”

“You did? Why?” Shawn laughed. It was like having a conversation with me, but only a nicer, younger, happier, cuter version of me.

“Dad thought it would be nice. We feel bad her boat is broken, and she hasn’t been out on the lake all season.”

“That’s nice.”

“Do you know she is 56?”

“No way she’s 56? Geez. You look good mom.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

I sigh, Shawn laughs, because he knows what’s the matter with me better than I do.

I notice the current of the lake has shifted since our boat ride. The calm stillness, once rippled by the boat’s wake, now drifts left with the breeze. Life, like the lake, has shifted, and I’m not sure whether to tread, swim, or simply float.