Meet Me at the Lake
By Adrienne Garrison
@adrie.garrison
On the morning of my daughter’s first birthday, I fed her pancakes with rainbow sprinkles in the batter. I took her with me into the poll booth and imagined telling her someday that she'd been there to help me vote in America’s first female president. The next morning, questions seemed to hang over us like low gray clouds, so her father and I bundled her up and drove to the lake. We watched the last brown leaves skate across the surface, holding one of her small hands in each of ours, swinging her gently between us and wondering about this world we had welcomed her into.
From that point on, we went to the lake whenever we weren’t quite sure where else to turn. We went to the lake believing a last remnant of hope might wash up on this gritty, midwestern shore. We went to feel less walled-in by circumstances out of our control. We went for fun.
Even when we didn’t have the words, we had the lake.
The year she turned two, the sun stretched its heavy rays all the way into September. Penny and I were weary of it, desperate for a cool down. I packed our trusty yellow tote, not knowing it would be our last trip to the lake just the two of us. We had the whole beach to ourselves—the waves and the sky, too. Penny played herself out and fell asleep in my arms like she hadn’t done in months.
Aside from a short trip to catch snapshots of her small hand on my huge belly, we barely made it to the lake the summer after that—the summer Theo was born. When we did go, she sat in the shade with her friends and delicately nudged raisins out of a tiny box for her snack while I nursed our brand new baby. She hated the new Puddle Jumper I made her wear—fell down sobbing in the sand because it wasn’t the same as my arms wrapped around her, keeping her safe in the water. It felt too tight. The lake was our place to be free and it must have seemed as though I didn’t understand, but I did, tethered as I was with an infant at my breast. My heart had blown open to accommodate new love, but was still grieving for the days of just-me-and-my-girl that seemed to be gone. I understood her completely.
***
“Did you learn to sew when you were my age?” she asks me, holding the threader up to eye level and focusing intently as she pushes the thread through. The evening sun stamps its golden patchwork onto our living room floor, moving imperceptibly toward the couch where I’m nursing her youngest brother, Sam. We’re lucky to get this small moment of quiet together, and I say a little prayer that Theo will stay engaged with the Legos up in the playroom a little longer.
“I think I was about six when my mom taught me,” I say, nodding. “We made a pillow.”
“That’s like you and me!” she says, delighted by this connection. She passes the thread and needle back to me in a silent request to tie the end. She’s tired of the way the fiber slips through her fingers without looping into a knot the way it does when it rolls off mine.
***
In 2018, I started visiting the lake alone, hiking the long peninsula, trying to figure out how to make room for all the things that mattered to me: my children, my marriage, my writing; and how to keep the upper hand on life’s unruly necessities: meals, laundry, budgets. Once I’d walked to the small grove of cedars, my mind had usually quieted enough to allow me to look out on the lake and be startled, once again, by its beauty. How content the water seemed—enclosed by forest, rippling beneath a brilliant sky.
By the time her fourth summer rolled around, Penny was showing her little brother how to toss stones, splash with sticks, and build small roads for his favorite trucks lined with stray goose feathers. Gone were the days of our small yellow tote. Instead, I loaded the beach wagon with a chair and umbrella, the pop-up shade, all of the various snacks, plus a book or a journal I would never feel settled enough to open, and a mesh bag full of sand toys. Clipping Theo into the carrier on my back, I’d slog into the gravelly sand, marveling at the lengths I was willing to go to get the peace I knew I’d find with the two of them happily pushing plastic vehicles at the shore for an hour. In 2019, we went to the lake to be at ease with one another in a way we couldn’t manage at home.
***
I pass the needle to Penny and smile at the way she murmurs my directions back to herself as she sews, “Up from the bottom and… down from the top, up from the bottom and down from the top.”
It amazes me how earnestly my daughter trusts me to guide her into something new: a skill, an experience, a challenge. She’s still young. It will take her time to realize how frequently I’m not actually sure which way to turn. It will take her even longer to comprehend the hard truth I have learned—how often there is no right answer, no clear direction.
***
In the summer of 2020, the lake was the only place open for swimming. We went two or three times a week, both kids in Puddle Jumpers now, but only Theo putting up a fuss about it. While the world seemed to buckle under the weight of unknown, Penny perfected her mermaid tail flip and bobbed further and further away from me, her eyes on the shimmering horizon, wondering where the limit was and how she would know when she got there. My voice over the water called her back for peanut butter sandwiches and more sunscreen, and I imagine those afternoons stretched long for her in the luxurious way of childhood. Back then, the lake was a place of no worries, aside from the bees hovering around her juice box. Even now, she sees it that way.
***
On the small circle of fabric, Penny’s running stitch has crossed over itself and gotten tangled. With a huff, she hands it to me and stomps off to find a snack. I double back through the hole she’s made and sort things out, grateful that for now it’s this easy. That, for the most part, any heartache in her life can be undone with a little patience, a bandaid, or an extra story before bedtime.
It won’t always be this way. I won’t always have a quick fix.
***
The lake has anchored us. It has been the one constant through this small handful of summers we’ve spent together—only six so far. Only six. But no matter what else we weather in the years to come, I pray we can always make our way back to this liminal space we found where no one needs to have the answers, not even me. Here, we can let the pebbles fall through our fingers and talk about the heaviness in her heart, or the questions crossing the surface of her mind. We can find a path through the trees and watch the water from a new angle, always believing things can change for the better. This has been our place to break free from what the day demands, to float on our backs and hear the way the world sounds beneath the small waves. No matter how many years pass from our very first summer, she can meet me at the lake and still be my child, small and perfect to me, both of us held in this space between water and sky.
Adrienne Garrison lives in Bloomington, Indiana with her husband and their two little ones. Her essays have appeared in Coffee + Crumbs and New Millennium Writings, and her short story “No Longer Mine” was recently featured in LETTERS Journal. Adrienne believes magic takes the form of heart-to-heart conversations, petit-fours, and walks in the woods. You can find more of her writing on her website.
Photo by Jennifer Floyd.