lake

LOST AT SEA

I set a goal at the beginning of the summer to swim across the lake every day. You might think that with all this hot, hot weather, this would prove to be a snap. So far I’ve made it about half the time. Trouble is, too much hot weather makes the lake too warm and it ceases to be inviting. This hasn’t happened since 2002 when slipping into the water really did feel like a bathtub. The good news is that a heavy rain will alter the temperature back to normal levels, and we had rain yesterday and today.

Swimming without a lane across an expanse of water alters your perception of where you are in the universe. You can try counting strokes to measure your progress or you can simply lose yourself in the cadence of the swim. If you fail to look up from time to time you can find yourself far off course. Once you prop your goggles on top of your head and collect your bearings you immediately have to push the distance out of your mind or you’ll drown just thinking about it. If fatigue sets in, which it always does with me on the return trip, you simply flip over on your back and float. My mother taught me this when I was a young, struggling swimmer.

“If you get tired float on your back,” she instructed.

“And do what?”

“Rest.”

“Rest?” I asked. “Rest in the water?”

“Of course.”

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© Robert Forlini

It seemed odd. Then I found out almost every swimmer knew this trick. There is absolutely no better way to de-stress. Find a lake, swim to the very middle, flip over on your back and stare up at the clouds.  Keep your hands fluttering occasionally so you don’t sink and then let everything melt away. Try to watch a least one cloud dissolve before you swim back.  You will return a different person. Just setting off from the dock to be alone on the planet will begin to lower your blood pressure.

When my daughter was in the fifth grade and eager to swim across the lake, I agreed on the condition we stop halfway over and float. This had the added bonus of allowing me to take a break from watching her swim.

“What do we think about?” she asked when we arrived near the center and we were treading water in a bicycle motion.

“Nothing.”

“Oh,” she said, seemingly unsatisfied.

“You think about how the earth is supporting you.”

“How nice,” she said.

WRONG DIRECTION

Every morning before breakfast I walk-run around the lake. There are seven hills and the course is two miles. After I pass my house once I switch directions and do it again. It’s amazing what you miss if you only walk in one direction. I was walking with my daughter one morning when I commented on a house we were passing. “They’ve almost finished tearing that house down,” I said. “What house?” “That one.” I pointed to the charred remains of a burnt bungalow. She gasped in surprise. “I never noticed that before.” “What?” It turns out that if you walk in the opposite direction and you’re not looking for it you just might miss it. But anyone who lived here the night it burned down last February wouldn’t overlook it. That night we turned off the lights and peered out the picture window, across the ice. There was a lot of smoke and then it exploded becoming engulfed in flames that shot fifty feet into the black sky. Our fascination was soon consumed by an utter horror that the firemen had no hope of saving it. Was everybody okay? Usually we watch houses rise up and mark the progress. Last week, when the outer walls of this house came down I peered into the owner’s bedroom closet. All their smoked filled clothes were exposed to the street but still neatly hanging on a rod and their shoes were lined up on racks like they were waiting for their owners to return. I felt like I was looking at something very private. Today with my daughter, only the fireplace remained. It stood tall with a few wood beams clinging to the blackened stone. It resembled an ancient ruin left behind by a civilization that owned a lot of stuff they didn’t need. If you lose everything in a fire, what’s the first thing you would buy when you started over? And what would decide to do without this time around?

Every morning before breakfast I walk-run around the lake. There are seven hills and the course is two miles. After I pass my house once I switch directions and do it again. It’s amazing what you miss if you only walk in one direction. I was walking with my daughter one morning when I commented on a house we were passing.
“They’ve almost finished tearing that house down,” I said.
“What house?”
“That one.” I pointed to the charred remains of a burnt bungalow.
She gasped in surprise. “I never noticed that before.”
“What?”
It turns out that if you walk in the opposite direction and you’re not looking for it you just might miss it. But anyone who lived here the night it burned down last February wouldn’t overlook it.
That night we turned off the lights and peered out the picture window, across the ice. There was a lot of smoke and then it exploded becoming engulfed in flames that shot fifty feet into the black sky. Our fascination was soon consumed by an utter horror that the firemen had no hope of saving it. Was everybody okay?
Usually we watch houses rise up and mark the progress. Last week, when the outer walls of this house came down I peered into the owner’s bedroom closet. All their smoked filled clothes were exposed to the street but still neatly hanging on a rod and their shoes were lined up on racks like they were waiting for their owners to return. I felt like I was looking at something very private.
Today with my daughter, only the fireplace remained. It stood tall with a few wood beams clinging to the blackened stone. It resembled an ancient ruin left behind by a civilization that owned a lot of stuff they didn’t need.
“Did anyone die?”
“Just the parrot.”
“Oh.”
If you lose everything in a fire, what’s the first thing you would buy when you started over? And what would you decide to do without this time around?

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BONDING

BONDING

When my son came home for a weekend visit he  announced he had purchased a fishing license and went out in search of fishing spots on the weekends from his job with the city of Baltimore.
“Fishing?” I exclaimed. His interest surprised me because he had grown up on a lake, which we still live on, and hadn’t fished since his first catch.
His previous abandonment of fishing occurred about a week after we moved into the new house, which he had practically begged us to buy precisely because of his ten-year-old dreams of pursuing this hobby. My husband took him out in the rowboat with their freshly purchased poles and lore, and they caught a small bass.
They brought it up to the house for dinner and all of us stood speechless as my husband demonstrated the ruthless process of just how to clean and filet a whole fish. He then dropped a hunk of butter in a cast iron pan and fried it. My son looked down at his plate, up to the water, and declared that he would never fish again. “So much for living on a lake,” I said.
But now with his renewed grown-up interest I was eager to join him. We went on a rare trip to Wal-Mart on the Fourth of July. I looked around at the losers walking around Wal-Mart on a holiday and realized that I, too, was now lumped into this category. My son came to the store with what he called a well-researched list of supplies and carefully selected each part necessary for his new sport. Just before we went to pay I noticed a shrink-wrapped package boasting “Everything you need to lake/pond fish” for only $29.99. I bought it. If my son was going fishing, then by god so was I.
My equipment was inferior, but was worth the resulting mother-son bonding—time spent in the boat looking for shady spots and continually untangling my line. We talked about our lives and I held my breath each time he had a nibble. I didn’t catch anything but he had caught about twenty small Sunnies that I admired as he held them up until each were unhooked and released back into the cool, dark water.
Invigorated by this experience, the next morning I suggested an outing in the Bear Mountain region because I knew he liked to hike. He took me up on it and we ascended a path labeled “challenging.” I willed every last remaining muscle in my core to heave my middle aged body upward; he would look back and say, “You okay?” to which I replied, “Great! I love hiking.” The truth was I never hiked even though we live a stone’s throw away from the Appalachian Trail.
After the hike we went to a local farmer’s market and purchased two whole black bass for dinner. True we hadn’t caught them, but it felt like we might have. Or we should have. It seemed that we finally liked all the same things. That evening as my husband started up the charcoal, my son showed me how to season, grease, stuff and score the fish for the fire. I had never actually taught him to cook but I realized that he had picked it up over the years by watching me and through trial and error.
The next morning he had to catch an early train back to Baltimore and I woke eager to drive him to the station. My husband was already dressed and had made him toast and tea when I showed up in the kitchen. I wanted to make him a big breakfast to keep him in good stead until he arrived back at his apartment but he declined. The toast was all he wanted.
I thought that all my feelings of separation anxiety had long passed with the ceremonial freshman year drop off, the ceremonial graduation, the ceremonial move into the first apartment, first job, etc. But suddenly those recently buried and laid to rest emotions all came rushing back at me and I saw both a grown man and a ten-year-old boy converge. He was showered and shaved and neatly dressed with his tidy bag packed at his feet and a fishing pole in one hand.
The only difference was that my arguments for a good breakfast and against flagging a taxi with a six-foot long pole to make a connection at Penn Station went unheeded. I decided against joining them on the ride to the station. It was better like this where I was unable to fret as he maneuvered the bag and pole out of the car and onto the commuter train to Grand Central. We hugged and he left. I watched the car pull away as the sun rose over the trees across the lake. Then I went fishing.