Girl child at the lake

I'm just back from a week's vacation at "the lake," a time honored Minnesota ritual for anyone lucky enough to have a lake place in the north country, or at least access to one. In my case, it's my dad's place. I've been heading up north since I was eight or so, when my dad, his two brothers, and my grandpa bought a small cabin on a lake near Grand Rapids. They crammed us all in -- the aunts, uncles, cousins. Nearly fifty years later we all head there still, with our (now adult) kids and sprouting grandkids in tow. 

A few years back my daughter and I dipped her daughter's infant toes in the water, christening the first of the fifth generation to travel there. Now that infant is five and jumping off the dock, like I did, opening her eyes underwater to look at fish, and scratching mosquito bites by night. This trip she exclaimed, "Grandma, look at the sun on the water! It's making diamonds!" My heart lurched at our shared love of the "diamonds on water." A circle back to my childhood and forward again.

Back home, I remembered a piece I wrote years ago about being a kid at the lake. Nothing's changed except the generations.

Girl child at the lake

I am ten years old and standing on the end of the dock. High noon in July – 85 degrees. Bright sun, blue sky, gentle breeze. Sugar Lake. Sissebakwet the Ojibwe name. My blonde blonde hair waves and whispers gently against my sunburned cheeks. My thin, lean body stretches to the water and jumps in. Cool cool surrounds me, and soft sand tickles my toes. I glide up to the surface for air and keep my eyes right at the waterline to stare across the lake at its tree-filled backdrop. The air smells lakey – a mix of fish, water, weeds, trees. I dive down again, opening my eyes to look for minnow friends.

Everything is possible and I am lying in wait for what’s to come.

Later, stretched out on the dock, my belly pressing into the sun bleached, splintery wood planks, my back hot hot from the sun bath, I can’t feel the edges between sky, earth, water, me. We just are. I just am.

This place of grace, this state of grace is in me still. That girl child runs roughshod through my veins. We are singing loudly, she and I, like a choir praising the power and the glory forever and ever amen. We are swimming in clear blue water and sunning on the dock. We hold hands and giggle, lying in wait for what’s to come.

Everything is possible. Still.