06/05/2026
I had a pony. His name was Simon.
To get to him I rowed the skiff my father made for us across the harbor to Simon’s summer home, Manana.
I wake up at dawn — that beautiful blue hour just before sunrise. It’s all about the tides. Moving with them is essential. Rowing across at high tide means less beach to haul the skiff, and it means catching that perfect swell that will gently land the skiff on one particular spot: a barnacle-crusted shelf drenched in the sway and tangle of slimy brown seaweed.
Timing is everything.
Not missing a moment of that window, I take a shortcut where the path passes a cottage. I am startled by a sleeping face framed behind squares of paned glass, slightly obscured by a gauzy white curtain. The morning breeze gently draws in and releases the fabric along with strands of long brown hair resting on the shelf of her shoulders and snaking along her neck. Her arms are tucked in. A single curve of her bare breast is visible and her presumed nakedness startles me— this woman at peace in her summer bed, asleep in the moments before wake. I am terrified her eyes will fly open.
Simon is long gone now. As summers turn to fall, he becomes a distant memory.
But the sleeping lady remains.
Her long brown hair now sparkles with silver highlights that catch the sun. Her face lined and weathered by more than seventy years of island summers. I still know her name as we pass, and she knows mine.
All these years later, I thought I had preserved her dignity.
Yet what is more dignified than the freedom of having slept naked on an island?
Strange Roots: Opening Reception July 22 | 4-7 pm
https://www.heatherwasklewiczphotography.com/news-blog/2026/5/27/strange-roots-you-can-go-home
