Summer Beach 2010

I'm starting up my writing group, NightWriters, for the season tonight. The assignment was to write about "my summer vacation." Here's my essay:

On a quiet Friday morning at the end of August I impulsively pulled on a swimsuit and jumped into the car. We live about 500 yards from Lake Michigan, but to get to a swimming beach requires a drive of about three miles. At this time of day, mine was the only car in the small gravel parking lot.

I stood on the boardwalk and looked over the narrow deserted beach and the calm, cool water beyond. Half of the small beach was inhabited by sea gulls nestled into the sand looking like they were not yet ready to rise for the day. The other half was empty of life and a long, dead, driftwood tree was lying parallel to the shore. That’s where I spread my blanket and, with my back against the tree, I ate my picnic breakfast and wrote in my journal.

A tiny voice in my head immediately sounded a warning about swimming alone, but I decided “to hell with it” and took the plunge. I eased my way past the stones near the shore and soon enough reached the sandy bottom where I had enough even footing to dip my whole body down into the water. Despite many, many hot days this summer, the lake was still cold enough to give me that gasping shock I usually felt when first going into big lake water.

This was my lake, the one I grew up with, the one I felt safe in although, truth be told, it could be dangerous. It had already claimed several lives by this point in the summer. As a nod to my more cautious side, I decided not to swim out over my head, but I went out deep enough to stretch my arms and legs. I’ve been a swimmer all my life and this was what I loved the most – that feeling of weightlessness when floating in water. Perhaps even more appreciated this year when I feel as if the weight of my life is sitting heavily on my shoulders, threatening to drown me.

It was the end of the last month of summer and this was the very first day I was enjoying it. I had gone off to a weekend at a cottage with my family in July and off to Santa Fe for a vacation earlier in August, and there were plenty of times I sat around and did nothing, but I was always agonizing over everything I should be doing. This was the first time all summer, maybe all year, when I gave myself permission to not feel the pressure to go – do – finish something!

I have noticed throughout my life that sometimes a given year will carry a theme; 2010 is such a year and the theme seems to be one of endings and beginnings.

Already this year my best friend lost her father two weeks before I lost my mother and a few days ago one of my daughter’s best friends lost her mother to suicide. These were heart-wrenching endings. On the flip side, before the year is out, I will have attended three weddings, including my son’s; and five people close to me will give birth, one of which has already produced my first grandchild.

And, here I sit in the middle – too old for beginnings and, God willing, too young for endings. The wide-eyed observer destined to float along and let the joy and sadness wash over my heart like waves, trying not to get caught up in the undertow.

I hobbled back over the stones and went up on the sand to lie down on my blanket. The beach was still deserted, but the sun was warming the air and felt good on my face and arms; too long spent indoors.

In a few days we will move our daughter back to college, but this year she goes into a house. When she lived in a dorm it was a little easier to think of her as still living at home, but when you move furniture, dishes, whole wardrobes - there’s no denying she has a new home base.

It’s a different kind of ending and beginning; certainly not as final as death, not as life-changing as marriage or birth; difficult for me, but so exciting for her.

So perhaps this fall I can finally relax and ride out the rest of this year…. float on my back while the swells push me along, let my bruises heal, and gather strength to face the endings by embracing the joy of the beginnings.