Last Day At The Lake: August 17, 2019

(Missing from the picture, Steve, Anna and Jude)

LAST DAY AT THE LAKE AUGUST 17, 2019

The house is sadder without the others. The driveway is so long. It now feels  barren without all the cars. The cavernous vaulted ceilings are empty, no longer reverberating with the jokes and game laughter of the evenings, filling the empty spaces.

The over-sized kitchen seems useless with just the four of us remaining. Knowing the only plans for today in the works is to eat, shower, cleanup, and leave, makes the light hanging from the bulb over the butcher block in the kitchen more desperate to hold on.  No trips to the beach packed like sherpas down the path with food, beer, chairs, blankets and lawn games like ladder-ball and cornhole.  No, it is just like the astronauts from the Gemini Space program in the Sixties circumnavigating the globe for a dozen days, then re-entering the earth’s atmosphere, always in danger of burning up. And like those astronauts, we go back to our routine lives with a different vocabulary than when we left. Others ask us what it was like, and we oblige, knowing there are parts that are so inexpressible in human language. So the first week after vacation, we are somewhat mute. Being at the lake can be just as disorienting as going into space.

One by one, as my children and grandchild leave, they take with them a little of the spirit that this large house lit up with for one week. Soon another family will fill it with their own mix of savory and sweetness that will mark their family time.

We are no perfect family to be sure. We spend a lot of time saying “sorry” and even more time releasing each other from the transgressions we commit against each other. For this week, we each drop what we are doing to make an effort to presence: to bear witness to the  importance of our relationship to each other. The currency we transact in is games, laughter, and dear God, the food we make and bring and share.

In the deep song  that is my heart I know this will not go on forever. Nothing does! We find a place that is really just a moment, to call our home for one week. We set up camp, plant a flag that is us, and invite those in our lives we are closest to and love the most, and invite them into the circle of us – odd ducks that we are.

We relish only what is, because at the lake, after all, that is the only thing that matters.