A Quiet Peace of Afterlife

I have never thought of myself as a victim. I have always been a fighter, a hustler, a “can do” kind of girl. Growing up I thought of my circumstances as quite harsh. Having my mother die when I was three and all the things that subsequently happened made me the thick-skinned, rebounding, plan B, "I don't care what you think about me," A-type person I’ve become. People are amazed that when they've only thought three steps down the road, I've thought down the road to its fork, taken both ways to check them out and figured out which one is best. Exhausting as that may seem, those steps were the key to my survival. They allowed me to forsee any possible doom. And doom was always present.

But if you're lucky - or at least alive and life becomes good or maybe just better, you don’t have to think that far down the road, your mind is left to ponder other futures and sometimes even the past. My surroundings now don’t have as much drama, or twists or forks in the road. So with not as much to cloud it or occupy every waking moment with how to survive, my mind led me to the very victim that I am – that I was. And in the quiet peace of my current surroundings, in the love and nurturing that I found, the little girl felt safe enough to face the torment. Because she knew it wasn't here to stay. It was "stopping by" on a request from my need to heal. It is so strange and wonderful how the mind protects us!

Growing up, I remember days when I would plot and plan to run away only to be scared out of going through with it - fearing more what might happen if I were caught than what life alone in the world would be like. I couldn’t wait the long time it would take for me to grow up to change my circumstances. There were times when I half-heartedly tried to kill myself. I would take 20 or 30 aspirin and a shot of my father’s scotch, throwing up as the drink scorched the inside of my esophagus on its way down - – can’t die if you can’t keep the poison in! I remember not knowing where to turn for help, but knew that there were times when a grown up would look at me, knowing something was wrong, but saying nothing. If they were helpless, then what did they think I was?

But once I grew up, I unwittingly spent the better part of my early adulthood fighting or maybe struggling is a better word. Because the torment doesn't end when your chronology gets you out of the house. It just shows up in the bad choices, the crippling depression and -- in your nightmares - nightmares that are brutal and cruel and revealing because remember it is your mind working to protect you. So you continue to fight the people who long ago threw you away. Even though you are grown, you don't win - you have to stop fighting and let go. In a way, its like the child – it has to tire out until there is no more fight. But sometimes, it is so hard to see that. Sometimes, it takes a little more time, maybe some therapy and a quiet peace that can be found in the words, "But I love you anyhow." When that happens, your mind can rest, the nightmares become only bad dreams - what a relief! But then, the child inside no longer needs to fight or hustle or figure out what is just beyond the bend in that forked road. That child can cry because it is safe. Quiet peace enables you to deal with unfinished business. Somewhere in my subconscious – and I say this having no real understanding of what that is – only that these memories were somewhere hiding inside of me waiting in the corners of my mind for the right time to come out and play in a quiet peace.

Interstate 20

I held him close as the cars went by. Their tires would crush the already-broken glass in their path as they inched by. Every once in a while, my eyes would meet those of someone passing and I wondered what they were thinking. I wondered if they knew how quickly it happens—how life changes in a moment. A child pressed his face against his window to see why the traffic moved so slowly. His eyes met mine and I looked away quickly, trying to protect him, hoping that by looking away, he would too. I looked down at the boy in my arms. He was not much older than the boy who’d just gone by. A few minutes ago, he too had probably looked just as sweet and innocent as that boy, this one in my arms.

He sucked in a breath as I drew him closer to me. His shivering was now something he couldn’t fight as the cold surrounded him inside and out. I looked down the length of his body and wished that my coat could cover him, shield him from what had happened. He tried to open his eyes, but they simply fluttered like butterfly wings, too weak to fight the rain drops that fell. I wondered for a moment if that was why I never saw butterflies in the rain when I was little. As the sound of the sirens grew louder, I whispered for him to hold on. I whispered to him and to God. For his life, I knew not to count on God, so I tried to will him to hold on until they could get to him. It was only a little while longer. I began to rock slowly believing that comfort would do more than stillness. I prayed that the heat of my body would warm him long enough. Wanting anything that could save him, I ate my crow and begged for God to please help him. It was not for me that I asked, I reminded Him. I opened my eyes to see him looking up at me. His eyes were grateful and aware. He looked at me and I pulled him into my chest, not wanting to know. I sobbed as I felt him being pulled away from me. Help had come.

I stood back and watched them work on him. I saw his foot move from side to side as they placed him on the stretcher and moved him into the back of the ambulance. His body only moved when they willed it. I knew. As their movements became frenzied, his became still. I turned to go sit in my car until someone needed me again. The rain beat deafeningly against the hood of my car.

The officer’s ring tapping on my window startled me. I loosened my grip on the steering wheel to roll the window down. My hands were numb - I kept hitting the passenger side button instead of my own. I finally got it right, but he wasn’t impatient. His wide-brimmed hat, with its plastic covering, was so appropriate for this weather. He asked if I knew the deceased. I told him what I had seen and that I couldn’t leave the boy alone on the side of the road like that. I had just pulled over and tried to help. I told him that I didn’t know what else to do. So I held him close as the cars went by.

No Rest

The day I grabbed my stepmother’s hand was one of the scariest days of my life. It began in the morning when I took too long in the bathroom. Kathy kept banging on the door and I tried to hurry. But I had just gotten my period and needed to take some extra time. I also didn’t want to yell out for everyone to hear, “I have my period, can I get a few more minutes please.” As I opened the bathroom door, which faced the stairs leading to our front door, she turned and hit me with the brush in her hand. When she went to do it again, I grabbed her arm and turned so that my back was to the stairs. She went to hit me again and I lunged forward, but not to hit her as she told my father later that day. It was to avoid falling down the stairs. In hindsight, it would have been best if I had simply fallen down the stairs. I was yelled out of the house and upon arriving at school realized that I had no sanitary pads with me.

I would be forced to ask for one from the school nurse, which put me in a precarious place. Again, she would ask probing, knowing questions like “you are always so sad, is there anything going on that you’d like to talk about?” I would plant a smile on my face and shake my head like a maraca backing out of her office. I was in no mood to plant that smile on my face today. I didn’t know if I could and if I couldn’t pull it off, I didn’t know what would happen.

When I felt more ooze between my legs than cotton, it was already between my first and second morning class. I scurried to the nurse’s office and waited near the counter for her to emerge from behind the door. As my only pleasure that day, the sub nurse walked out and after asking me what I needed, slapped it down on the counter in full view of whoever might have seen it had there been someone else in the room. I jammed the napkin into my pocket and sprinted into the girl’s bathroom. I was safe! There was some part of me that wished Mrs. Yearwood had been in though – I did like how nice she was to me.

My next class continued the lack of fortune for me as I completely blanked on everything I knew about Julius Caesar. I now was dreading not only going home this afternoon, but what my day would be like if I had to take a failing grade home to be signed in a few days I attempted to focus and used the inevitable as my motivator. The rest of the day was not much better as I was called on to answer questions and admonished for daydreaming or being unprepared. When the final bell sounded it freed everyone else around me. But for me it rang in my doom.

When I opened the front door, the silence told me that my bad day would continue only more so. I had learned to read the mood of the house. My father’s car was in the driveway so I knew he was home and I knew to immediately busy myself with chores to diffuse the tension.

I processed what happened next in slow motion. I was punched and hit more than I had ever been hit before and I was cursed for existing. I was yelled at for trying to throw Kathy down the steps. I was punched and slapped alternately as my head moved to avoid each blow. Each time I attempted to escape, I was yanked back into the moment by my foot, then by my hair, my arm. Escaping to my room, he followed and flung everything I touched, to the wall.

Then he threw me against the wall. And as I ran to each corner of the house looking for a place to crouch down and curl into a ball to minimize the damage, he found something on me to grab so he could pull me up just to smack me back down. I heard a voice tell me to get out. I don’t think it was his and I know it wasn’t mine. It was in my head, but it didn’t sound like me. I was afraid to leave, not knowing if I could get back in. But as the chase continued and the blows hit now tender, sometimes bloodied skin, outside became my only option.

So I fought back. And I fought to get out. He now fought to keep me there, which somehow seemed more terrifying once I decided to go. I fought, I clawed, I pushed and I kicked. I could even hear myself grunting as I fought to pull away from his grip. He had stopped hitting and was trying to hold onto me, but I wouldn’t let him. And suddenly, I was not beating against flesh, but wood. He had shoved me out the door. Now I wanted to go back. I wanted to get back in. Where would I go? Was this for now or forever? What did I do? I turned and slid my body down against the door waiting to hear a click and the turn of the knob, but after what must have been half an hour, I realized that I wouldn’t hear that sound. I stood and began to walk. I turned and walked down the path to the gate that enclosed the yard. With nothing but the coat I walked in with, I walked away not knowing where I would be next. The man who had once called me princess, banished me from the castle. I stood outside the gate holding his gaze as he stared out the window. I said nothing. I mouthed nothing. He left the window before I turned away and for a moment I expected – or hoped he was coming down to ask me to come back home. He was sorry. I stood there for what should have been time enough to see the door open and finally knew this was as I had predicted. Despite every awful day that preceded it, this was the scariest day of my life.

* * * * *

Barbara represented for her mother, Mary what children could become with a little planning, a little work and a little love. She intended to put her oldest daughter on a course where she wouldn’t have to lie or steal to make something of her life. Mary filled Barbara’s life with the best of everything and as many opportunities as she and her husband Gene could afford to give her. Barbara was an accomplished singer who led the high school and church chorus, she played piano, tennis and basketball. She was president of the Homemakers of America and Secretary of the Typing Club and the organist and lead soprano soloist at Calvary Baptist Church. She was well known and well liked. But with all the clubs and activities, social engagements, church events and friends, Barbara was bored. She thought of their trips to Manhattan – even the word Manhattan just rolled off the lips so much more sophisticated than the words South Carolina – too many syllables she thought – she wished that somehow they could move there. She would graduate in a year, but her mother’s plan was for her to attend college at Benedict College right there in Columbia. She was smart enough she knew, but Barbara was more restless than anything.

At night, she could hear the muffled sounds of jazz coming from the Fountain Bleu Night Club just past the field behind her house on Farrow Road. The saxophone was like a snake charmer’s flute drawing her in as she swayed to the fluid rhythms at the windowsill of her bedroom. One night she mustered the courage to sneak out that same window, put on one of her party dresses in the shadows of her back yard and walk across the field.

* * * * *

Not knowing where I was going, I walked. I walked to think. But I couldn’t stop because then I would have to make a decision about where to walk next and I didn’t have that answer which would make me cry. Since I wasn’t ready to do either, I kept walking. Manhattan wasn’t an option, at least not for now. I didn’t have any money to get on the subway. Since night was descending, I knew I wouldn’t have time to walk there. I had to find a place to stay in Queens. Shame kept me from staying with anyone I knew. To pass the time and keep from crying, I traced back through everything I knew about how I had come to be where I was now. I thought back beyond my birth attempting to find some clue as to why I was walking along Sunrise Highway with no where to go and, as far as I knew no one who cared where I went.

I found myself walking towards the mall. Logic, the cold and the sunset indicated that it was a good idea. I could stay there until it closed which would be about 10:30pm or so. Then I would have to figure out my next move. I needed a longer term plan, but my mind was clouded by the fatigue that was setting in and I still needed to get to the mall – more than five miles away. The sun was fading fast. My back straightened as my plan began to feel like the right one and I picked up my pace. Thinking about the day’s events was low on my priority list since it would make me cry. I couldn’t afford to let anyone see me so vulnerable so I began thinking about what type of work I was qualified to do and how, with no money, I would buy a newspaper to look for a job.

As the mall lights grew out of the ground it occurred to me that everyone there would be going someplace when it closed - except me. I couldn’t dwell on that now, it would make me cry.

As I entered the mall, I squinted at the brightness. My face felt tight from walking in the cold for so long and the tears I had shed earlier. The scents from the food court reminded me that I had no money. I spied a newspaper in the garbage can and when I thought no one was looking, I took it out and walked away hoping no one had seen me. I had never felt as ashamed as I was at that moment. I used to watch people pick garbage cans, now I was one of them.

My legs ached as I walked the mall. I refused to sit so I read as I walked. Trying to keep thoughts of what happened out of my mind, I concentrated hard on what I was reading but I kept reading the same thing over and over. I couldn’t concentrate. Like a strobe light, visions and sounds continually flashed through my mind - my father’s face, curses, the back of my hand protecting my face, my father in the window. It suddenly occurred to me that I should get to a mirror to assess what I looked like. I went into the ladies room and looked like what I was - homeless. My coat was one of my older ones. I corrected my thought. It was now the only coat I had. My face was red and swollen. My earring dangled awkwardly in crusted blood from a hole that only a few hours before had been a small pierce. At least the bruising I felt on my body was covered by clothing. I would assess that damage later or maybe never. I stared deeply into my own eyes and when I felt my lip quiver, I backed away from the mirror. It was the first time I understood why the eyes were the window to the soul.

I pulled some paper towels from the dispenser and went to work. I doused the towels in cold water and covered my face. I found an old lipstick in one of my pockets and it became a blusher and eye color in addition to its normal use. I heard change jangle and jabbed my hands into my pocket, through a hole where there was a quarter, a dime and three pennies. I didn’t know what I would do with that, but I felt a little better. I left the bathroom looking better than when I went in, but nothing could ease the tightness in my chest. I went into Korvettes department store and used one of the moisturizer display samplers to sooth the tightness and cure the flaking on my nose. I moved quickly so that the Estee Lauder clerk wouldn’t come over and ask me what I was doing there. I was a kid and this was old lady make up.

* * * * *

Barbara was mistaken for grown at the door and ever since, she was a regular at the club. She developed a routine for getting out at night. She would stow the nightgown she wore over her dress behind a bush, pull an all-purpose lipstick from between her breasts, which she would pat lightly on her cheeks and rub heavily over her lips. She would tuck it again deeply between her double D cups as she made it across the field into the parking lot at the edge of which she would take a deep breath and begin her “as well as you please” saunter. Once past the front door, men would trip over each other trying to buy her a drink. She would stand and swoon to the music pretending to ignore them until one she liked asked to buy. She would then make eye contact and in her South Carolina drawl, let him know that she didn’t like the taste of alcohol, but would be “mighty appreciative” if he could get her a soda. For some soda was the warning she was jailbait. For others it was a challenge.

Her obviously mulatto appearance made the barflies wonder if her father was black and her mother was white or the other way around. There were nights when entire drunken exchanges were only about Barbara’s background. She was a big girl at nearly 6 feet, but carried it well. She walked tall when most girls her height would slump to hide their length. Mary had shown Barbara how to dress for her size and not to squeeze herself into something too small, “We big women have to carry it with grace and style.” It cost more because her clothes were really for women not girls so they helped disguise her youth. It was worth it. At least until Ben walked in the bar. Ben was an enlisted man on leave. He was tall and chocolate with skin the texture of butter. Barbara fell hard. He talked of all the places he had been and Barbara wanted to be anywhere but where she was. Their long conversations revealed that Barbara was younger than she appeared. But he wasn’t going to call her on it. He played along because the prize if he won this game was her innocence.

* * * * *

I roamed through the stores, pretending to look for my size or another color in the clothing racks, keeping my head down so no one would make eye contact with me. I went to the bookstore and looked through some books about getting jobs. There was a man leering at me over the top of his book. This had happened to me before, but now I felt more vulnerable. His gaze was predatory, nasty and I felt trapped by it. I misplaced my book back on a shelf and quickly walked out. Tears were in my eyes again. I looked at the ceiling to keep them from running down my face. I walked into Woolworths where the clock behind the counter indicated that I had forty five more minutes left to decide what next. I turned to see that man was not behind me.

As I walked up and down the isles in the store, I knew that I needed a job. I knew how to get one, I just didn’t have the tools. What I needed were clothes, clean underwear and a brush. Oh, and a toothbrush! I can’t speak to people without brushing my teeth. Yuck! Well, that was all I needed, but that might as well have been a million dollars because I didn’t know how to get the things I needed. I walked to the section of Woolworths where they had toothbrushes and looked at the price. Eighty-nine cents was more than I had or might ever have. I continued up and down the isles. I was afraid to leave the store because of that guy but as the same people saw me over and over with nothing in my hands to buy, I left the store before someone questioned my loitering.

When I got to one end of the mall, having no where else to go, I turned around and walked back to where I had started. After doing this several times, my stomach began to grumble again and I sat on a bench and tried to think about where I would go instead of thinking about my stomach. My father’s screams and bulging, glassy, hazel eyes flooded my head. As I tried to will him out of my mind, his long cigarette stained teeth and fingers kept appearing before me. I got up to avoid these rumblings in my head and to find some way to quiet my stomach. The smells of cinnamon buns, hamburgers, Chinese food and cheese steaks were too much and my stomach couldn’t wait for food any longer. My throat began to close, my eyes watered and I made it to the bathroom in time to stand over the commode and wait for my dry heaves to produce something for it to catch. I stared at the circles my tears created on the water. I was relieved that I was sick because then I wouldn’t need to eat.

I heard a voice over the loudspeaker announce that the mall was closing and that everyone should move to the exits, “Thank you for shopping Green Acres Mall and will that little homeless teenager whose father beat her up, please leave the mall.” I know it was in my head, but as people 20 deep filed through the doorways, eye contact unavoidable. They all looked at me as if they too had heard the voice tell me to leave the mall. As I walked out into the night, a panic took over and I began to hyperventilate making me colder faster. Fear grabbed at my stomach and twisted it. With no toilet available, I took a few small deep breathes, cleared my head, squeezed the tears from my eyes and found some ability to focus. As my breathing calmed, the cold traveled down my throat and filled my stomach. I didn’t want to be cold. I’d rather be hungry than cold.

* * * * *

For a few weeks, Barbara and Ben met at the bar and would take walks from there and talk. He told her about countries he had visited and his tales of adventure in those places. She was young and living in South Carolina. It had never occurred to her that most enlisted men at the time had been overseas. She was captivated by his stories never knowing they were lies. He told her that he loved her. He bought her cheap little gifts that she thought were symbols of longevity but they were signs of deceit. He never pressed her about her life because he already knew she was a child. And it relieved her that he never asked. She thought she might lose him. Those evenings when he would leave her in the parking lot of the Fountain Bleu or in the lot at the park, his long deep kisses intoxicated her. He was gentle and sweet. He made his groping feel innocent to her as he lightly brushed his hand along her breast or rested his hand on her thigh. It was effective, not innocent. It was calculated, not accidental. And it didn’t take long before he took her innocence. He snatched it quickly and disappeared. He thought he had outsmarted his victim. But he was wrong. And he was the father of the baby she was carrying.

Before sunrise, the day after graduating from high school, Gene and Mary put Barbara and all her belongings in the car. They loaded their shame and her suitcases in the trunk and drove her to Tennessee. They were taking her to Ben. He was recalled from duty and married to my mother in a shotgun ceremony on July 21 1953.

Barbara learned to be lonely with someone in a small space. Knowing how to play piano and being well liked were no longer useful. The only conversation was the one in her mind where she replayed her mother screaming at her over and over again about the future and how it was gone and all her hard work to make something out of Barbara . . . .

* * * * *

I would go to a hospital. The thought slid into my mind without any help from me. The blankness of my thoughts interspersed with visions of earlier blocked my thinking, but the word “hospital” popped in my head and stayed. I wondered for a moment if my subconscious was telling me that I needed to be in a hospital. But I was fine. No, my subconscious was giving me the next step. It was like Leonard Nimoy’s voice from the show “In Search Of” said, “On tonight’s episode, we go In Search Of. . .” and HOSPITAL flashes across my mind.

Now that I knew where I was going, I had to figure out how to get there. The hospital was at least two or three miles away and I couldn’t take a bus. As I stood among other people waiting to cross the street to their cars or for the bus, I wished for a moment, that I belonged to one of them. I pulled my coat closer to my body and took a deep breath forgetting how frozen the air was. I looked up to the sky to ask why me, as my tears disappeared among the snowflakes that fell softly on my face. I walked to the service road of Sunrise Highway and noting the irony of its name, I was warmed by the headlights of the cars that passed me. I walked, but I didn’t think. It was the first and last time I couldn’t do more than one thing at a time.

* * * * *

At night her body ached as her belly grew. Barbara walked from one end of the tiny living quarters to the other in the time it took her to rub her belly five times. She had nothing else to do but count. Ben was hardly ever there now. The man who was her constant companion at the Fountain Bleu was now her brutish, unkempt, absent husband. Walking eased the pressure the baby created on her body, but not on her mind. When she could sleep, her mother’s face and screams echoed anger over and over making her toss and turn. She would see her father’s face, but he just sat looking at her. He would just sit there saying nothing. But his silence was thick with judgment. The silence would wake her – or was it the baby kicking?

* * * * *

About an hour later, Interboro General Hospital welcomed me out of the darkness with its brightness and fluorescent hum. My eyes hurt as I looked up at the sign that identified where I would spend the night and where I had spent a night so long ago. My feet were stiff and I was covered in snow. My face was tight again as I tried to open my mouth to let out a sigh of relief but I was too tired and cold to take in a deep breath. I had made it. My happiness at accomplishing this made my eyes well up with tears that froze in my lashes.

I would soon be warm. But for how long? Now that I was here, I began to question if this was such a good idea. Someone might ask me what I was doing here or where my parents were. I straightened myself, tried to dust some of the snow from my coat and put my nearly frozen hands on my face to reduce what I thought was swelling. I needed to appear to be a grown up at least until morning. I could do that. I pushed the panel on the revolving door and was finally able to breathe that sigh of relief.

* * * * *

Discomfort and loneliness didn’t last long. Barbara named the stillborn baby girl. It didn't matter what - it would not have a headstone anywhere. She was a beautifully formed girl that had the cord wrapped around her neck at birth. The baby never knew the emptiness her presence and her death created. A year later, Ben died of a heart attack and my mother with one suitcase and a perfectly folded flag took a bus to New York City.

* * * * *

My father and mother met a year later. Neither was really interested in the other. They were only interested in having a good time – not a relationship. Barbara was mourning one death, getting over a short, lousy marriage and relishing her dream of finally being in New York. Cassell, my father, was focused on a new business venture. One in which he would be boss – he would be owner. Something that very few men – and in particular very few black men had the chance to do. They were together on terms they each created and could live with. They moved into a little apartment together in May 1959. They couldn’t marry because my father’s first wife refused to give him a divorce. He wished she would have a heart attack or something. Instead he divorced her by claiming abandonment of spousal duties and waiting. The papers finally arrived in the mail the day that I, Reagan Chevelle, was born. My mother and I were at the hospital while my father went home to shower, change and tell everyone his happy news. It was December 9, 1963.

* * * * *

The lobby was warm and luckily, the guard did not look at me. He was pointing and telling other people where to go. It seemed a busy night with all the commotion and brightness. I saw the sign to the bathroom and walked toward it. Once inside a stall I sat and heard only one question bounce around in my head like the Atari dot, “How did I get here?” The question formed over and over again. I turned to sit on the toilet. There was no seat cover but the walk and the cold had numbed my legs. My jeans clung to my thighs. Thoughts of my mother flickered through my mind. My mother had at least been chauffeured into a new life at seventeen and given to someone. Now, at that same age, I had been beaten into mine, with nowhere to go. Safe for now, I was back where I started. Finally, the tears flowed and I muffled my sobs in my still cold, wet collar. How did I get here? Sitting in the bathroom of the hospital where I’d been born, there was no answer. There was no rest. Only tears.

The Lake

Before we were married, my husband asked me where I saw myself in 30 years. It was the late 1980s. I had big hair, a big gown and big dreams. My answer was at our beach house, playing with our grandkids on the sand wearing sweatshirts and shorts. It would be Thanksgiving. I would have a 20-pound turkey roasting as we flew kites and played on the beach. This would be our tradition. It was the perfect combination of his, mine and ours. Thanksgiving is my husband’s favorite holiday. The beach is my favorite place. Like first love, the beach is overpowering and strong - - too magnificent for words. So intense you can’t breath – like when you get hit by a wave and you’re turned and tossed and crawl on shore to catch your breath.

When I was a little girl, I would sit on the sand and watch the waves turn over. For hours. They provided background music to the images that played in my head. Entranced by the rhythm that may have saved me from jumping into the surf, the sound was louder than the problems of my everyday life. Those waves made me feel small. They made the life of a young women coming to terms with her place in the world, but with little help or guidance about how to do that, somehow more manageable. I found order to my life in the tumult of the waves.

Sitting on the dock now, looking out at the lake – our lake – I realize now that this is where I will be playing with our grandkids. It is not the beach. But it is the best we could do. Three kids, two tuition bills and self-employment that allows us to indulge our penchant for places described in the New York Times Travel Section on a moment’s notice put a beach house out of reach, at least for now.

When we began looking at vacation homes, I told him, “I’m not a lake person.” He knew this. There was no need to turn the knife deeper. For a man who attempted to make all my dreams come true my sensitivity was momentarily lost in my disappointment. I knew there were some lakes that were so big you couldn’t tell they were lakes. With a little imagination, and a few boats creating a wake, I would have my waves, but it was the sounds and the smells that I would miss. I masked my disappointment in a smile and a gentle nudge and we began our unenthusiastic search.

It didn’t take long. Three full day visits over a two- week period and we found the perfect house. We called our realtor to put in an offer. It was a lovely, 4-bedroom chalet with a fireplace, a Brady Bunch bathroom between two of the bedrooms, a wet bar and wrap around deck for entertaining in move-in condition. While we waited to hear from Ed our realtor, we contemplated how important the distinction between “waterfront” and “water view” was to us. I felt I shouldn’t be picky. How many people had a vacation house? How many people had a water view? And besides, we could have paid an excavator $10,000 to remove the boulders – the house was after all, located on Boulder Court – to give us access through the back of the property to the waterline. Ed returned our call to apologize because he had not known that another offer had been accepted just that morning. Phew! I really wanted waterfront but the house itself was so perfect, I didn’t think I should want perfection and the lake too!

We decided, at my insistence to go back and look at the one that made him fling the real estate website description at me and proclaim, “I can’t live here. This place is a cesspool.” To some degree it was. We were standing on a rickety dock, looking out at the mosquitoes and flies rising in the evening breeze. I took his hand and turned him toward the back of the house, nearly 150 feet away from what would be our waterfront. “I can fix it up,” I said. “This is a year-round house with heat. Look at all the land and the trees. They’re beautiful. Think of the kids playing here.” Just then, a deer ran behind us through the overgrown wooded backyard confirming this as the place we should buy. I closed the deal with, “Tara would love that animals are so close.” He grimaced and turned to walk toward the real estate agent. When he began asking questions, I knew it was ours. I finally had water in my own backyard.

In the early afternoon just before the flies rise and the fish poke their heads out looking for bugs that have taken a rest, the lake is so still it appears solid. Reflecting the houses and trees that encircle it more perfectly than they are, the lake looks like a mirror. It is not so big that I cannot see the other side, but it is not as small as the cesspool Stuart originally thought. After clearing some of the overgrowth from years of neglect and trimming wayward limbs that block the view, we now watch flies hatch as thousands upon thousands of them burst out of the water making tiny circles that look like a gentle rainfall. Each and everyday we watch those same flies complete their short and swift life span as they return to rest on the water becoming nourishment for what swims just beneath the surface.

Memorial Day weekend we bought a canoe, secured it to the top of the truck, loaded a weekend’s worth of groceries and toys and headed here in a flurry of excitement. With no dock at the water line, we pushed the boat off into the lake and I stood watching my three year old, his six year old sister and their father paddle, point and smile back at me on shore. We would alternate waving back and forth to each other as if they had just embarked on their maiden voyage on a great ocean liner while I stood on the Pier to see them off. Watching them, I breathed in the crisp mountain air feeling truly happy and fulfilled. The easiness of his smile as I remind him that he said, “I can’t live here,” is a testament to how much he loves being out on the lake. He has purchased every fishing accoutrement necessary to catch the sunfish and stray bass that swim beneath the surface. The canoe informed him that what he thought was a cesspool was actually a fishable lake about the size of two football fields where he can row out to the center, cast his line and contemplate how his Giants will do next season without Strahan. The kids excitedly tell me all they were pointing at in the lake, “Mommy, we saw a snake,” overlapped by the other’s voice, “Mom, there was a frog swimming in the water.”

As Stuart and I corral the kids back into the house to settle in for some dinner and a movie before bed, I smile a thank you to the pine, birch, conifer and elm trees that provide shade from the heat of the day and the clean, odorless air that I take deeply into my lungs now. They are good to us.

Once inside, dinner and dishes done with our children scrubbed, I enjoy the view through my window far more than the movie that has been chosen for the evening. Across the lake, I spy a deer. She gently bends to lap some of the cool lake water into her mouth as she simultaneously circles her tail to signal to her fawn that it is safe to follow her. A spindly-legged light tan baby cautiously moves in beside her to drink from the mirror lake that becomes an endless series of circles that emanated from where they disturbed it. In the winter when the air is bitter cold and the lake is frozen, the deer sit on the ice aware they are safe from the humans who would not dare test the thickness of the ice. I now know where the Christmas cards with the same image come from. This is my backyard.

I smile as Stuart whose head by now is tilted gently back against the top of the sofa and a gentle purr escapes his open mouth indicating a contented sleep. The gloaming sends muted amber rays through the window facing the lake. The fireflies begin their dance to show me places I noticed before now. As shadows turn into darkness, the crickets begin their song and an occasional “ploop” of the water lets us know another fish poked its head out in hopes of catching an unsuspecting fly.

Carrying my children to their beds and nudging my husband to his, relief comes in the form of a sigh. My fatigue is temporary and I happily look forward to it coming again tomorrow evening. With the windows now closed and a blanket of darkness surrounding the house, I take my last look at my water. As the moonlight dances on the gentle ripples made by those creatures who bed down in its cold waters for the night, my smile comes deep from within me. The beach crosses my mind and the person I am must analyze its appearance in my thoughts. While the beach is my first love, this lake is my true love. I visit the beach every so often. It is a powerful, tumultuous place where I go to feel small. I go to the beach to listen as the waves crash against the shore. Here I can think. Here, there is peace. Peace in my children’s laughter as it dances on a breeze. Peace in the quiet through which only a distant bumblebee can be heard. Having a beach house would have been a dream. But here, at the lake, I am in paradise.