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.