When I was in my thirties, when I was making good money and the whole world seemed possible, even inevitable, I had a sort of central fantasy for my life. I imagined that one day, I would buy a lake house, and it would be the gathering place for everyone in my extended family.
I imagined a lake house version of Mom and Dad’s Thanksgiving table, but with me as the point person and Mom as the sage matriarch. It would be the same kind of rowdy, laughing crew who shared our Thanksgiving table every year, some of my favorite memories of my life.
I remember my cousin Jason deep frying two turkeys and burning a hole all the way through his two story deck but he still showed up at Mom and Dad’s house with the birds and his family; Aunt Linda frying bacon over the kitchen stove all day long but there is still none left for the creamed corn because everyone who walks past grabs a piece, Dad doing mise en place in front of the football game, snapping beans and grating corn and later cleaning up all by himself when everyone else flees for the movies like we are escaping the scene of a crime; Darrie going back and forth to the Kroger when we realize we are running low on milk and fixing whatever it is that someone breaks in the chaos; Aunt Nancy funny as anyone on a main stage, making us all wild with laughter as she re-enacts parenting a two year old having a temper tantrum, frantically thumbing through child rearing books as her kid howls from the top of the staircase; Granny showing up with a literal back seat filled with baked goods, so everyone gets their favorite (mine: cherry cookies with a chocolate kiss).
And of course Mom in the center of it all, head chef, the steady maypole around which we all spin, always sighing at me, “Robyn, I promise, there is enough cheese,” as I fret, “We should probably grate another block of cheddar.”
All I wanted all my life, was more of this, please, so I thought I would bring a lake house into the mix. a summer version of our holiday joy. That would be my contribution to this family I loved so much.
I could see it so clearly. I imagined my husband (a mystery! Who could he possibly be?!), and my kids (how wild, me as the Mom), and Mom and Dad and Aunt Linda and Aunt Nancy and Darrie and Jason and everyone. My lake house would be the gathering point for everyone I loved, everyone who needed love, because that’s how Mom did it, growing the family, every year. And we’d swim and water ski, and do cookouts and big rowdy meals, and it would be just like Thanksgiving, but on water, what could possibly be better?
Then I grew up, and the Mystery Man showed up, but kids never did. I left my big career, burned out on capitalism, which is a life choice I stand behind but is not conducive to owning second homes on lakes. And Mom left, way too soon, and my extended family, which had always been built around her, kind of drifted apart. Not on purpose, and I still hope not for always, but time and politics and pandemics, the world is changing so fast and in ways that sometimes make me look up at the sky and think, “Mom, you got out just in time, good call,”
But there is a lake.
Last time I said I would give you the narrative strategy that would save you when you were torpedoed into the sea. It’s always my favorite part of my workshops, and it’s the secret that I promise anxious CEOs will allow them to sleep well at night no matter what is going on with their company. It’s also an excellent strategy if you want to stay out of jail, so we definitely want to cover that one.
But this week I’m letting the story rest for a minute. This week, I’m at the lake. And if very little else in my life turned out as I imagined, there is still a lake.
The Liminal Space and The Happy Place
It started small: three days on Lake Fontana sometime in the summer of 2014, a few months after Mom died, with just me and Steve and Dad. It was a quiet year. It was a quiet crew. But we sat on the deck, the three of us, and Steve made gin and tonics, and I dove into the cool green water and felt it do what water always does, and something inside me felt peace, maybe for the first time in years.
Limnal is from the Latin word for “limen,” which means transitional. It’s a sort of threshold space, in literature often a doorway, real or metaphorical, something you must pass through, a sometimes unsettling transitional space. The theologian Richard Rohr refers to a liminal space as a “threshold between one stage of life to another”.
The next year, a friend was going through a rough divorce, and she had two young kids, and I said, hey, come play at the lake, and they did, her older son used up all our internet bandwidth on the first day, her younger son spent the entire trip in the driveway hunting frogs, both her kids started calling Dad Judge Fish because he used to be a judge and he swam like a fish, and Steve made gin and tonics, and my friend and I played in the water like we were six years old again but now we get vertigo and water trapped in our ears, and I laughed and felt light, felt free, just for a minute.
It’s an unsettling feeling, being in the world. The river is always moving, always heading towards the sea.
But not when you’re at a lake. The lake is not a liminal space. The lake is a resting place. Rivers flow in, from the mountains above, and rivers flow out, heading to the sea; and there are rapids above and there are rapids below, but on the lake, it is quiet and peaceful.
The lake is the opposite of a liminal space. The lake is my happy place.
You Can Never Imagine
In some ways it feels like we’re in an endless transition between the world we grew up in, the security that we once felt, the Thanksgiving dinners and the people that we still miss, the life we once imagined and the life we can’t imagine, that is coming at us possibly too fast.
That’s where we are in the story, if I’m being honest. We’re in that liminal space between the first act and the second. Between the time in my life when I thought the right story could save me, could save all of us, and the time when I realized, it’s not about the stories at all.
But right now, right this minute, right this very minute, I am not on a Class V rapid about to tip over, I’m not rushing too fast towards the sea. Right now, I’m at the lake.
It’s our tenth year at the lake, the tenth year since I started to build something new, something without Mom, something without Fiver, and we stay for two weeks now because it’s the only way to fit in all the people we want to gather around us. One year, I nervously invited a new friend, wondering if we would have enough to say to each other, and seven summers later, the two of us sat on the front deck in the early morning light and she said “You know, a lake is the place between two rivers,” and I stole her line. At one point this year we had six kids at once, plus parents; it was a level of holy chaos that made family Thanksgiving seem like a Quaker meeting, and after that crew drove off I came back into the house to this sight:
Tomorrow, another friend will arrive, but today, just today, it’s us, me and Steve, alone out on the water, him on his kayak, me on a SUP. We’ve been paddling for some length of time, Steve on his kayak with his binoculars, sighting blue herons and ospreys. There’s one spot with a waterfall, and we pause there, listening to the rush of water.
I sit down on my board, but I have drifted a bit away from him, and Steve swirls the paddle of his kayak, making waves that draw my boat right up to his.
“Learned that move much later in life,” he says, with a grin, and I answer,
“But then you learned it for good,”
I take a deep breath. It is quiet. It is beautiful. I am safe. My mind returns again to the Desdirata line that reminds me, when I feel unrest stirring deep inside.
Whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Next week, this story moves forward. We’ll talk about the narrative strategy that will help you stay out of jail, and then, shortly after, I am going to do something quite literally illegal. There’s a lot of road to travel, and some of it is tricky ground. We’re going to have to find our way forward together, with a bit of faith.
But we can do it. I know we can. And the lake is partly how I know it. We are recreated, every year, in this resting space between the rivers.
The lake reminds me, no matter what happens, no matter how life turns out, if you show up, and you are patient, and you say again and again, would you like to join me here, then all you have to do is buy enough groceries, and open your doors.
So much of what I imagined my life would be never came to pass. My career did not take off as I always assumed it would. The person I always loved most in the world is gone forever, and the family I desperately longed for never emerged…but something else grew in its place. Something just as beautiful. Just as precious.
And to every single person in my extended family who is reading this: the first two weeks of August. The lake is here. You are always family. You are always welcome.
There will always be enough cheese.
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This is one chapter in a year-long saga of love, grief, and the stories we tell to survive it all. To start from the beginning, go here. Or subscribe for free to get a new chapter (almost) every week.
Your northern family desperately needs the peace of a lake.❤️
I can feel the relaxation in your words as you write. It surely made me feel relaxed and I’m not even on the water. So many times when I’m reading what you write you remind me of me. My dream wasn’t a lake house, but it was a huge house where everybody has their own section of the house and then a community living room, dining room and kitchen. It also had car garages on each side. I don’t know why a garages were important at that time, but I too wanted all of my family to be there together. Also as you know like you I have suffered losses in life.
Life can sometimes seem like we are going down a river or across the lake in that we must learn to take a different turns and continue making the best of things. I love your sweet soul Robyn.