It's been awhile since I taught E. B. White's classic essay "Once More to the Lake," but it's elegaic title and tone capture the experience of this summer's brief trip to Michigan. As I mentioned in the last post, in early June, my youngest daughter and I flew to Traverse City to meet up with my parents, my older brother and his partner, and my sister and her family. Last summer was reunion year - all three of my siblings and their families, all my nephews and nieces, and all of my own children gathered on South Shore Drive for a summer vacation that was both relaxing and emotionally draining. There were a lot of people to feed and entertain. We weren't all on the same schedule, but even so, we did make some great memories. This summer trip had no expectations and so less drama, but also fewer emotional highs.
Like White, my experience of the lake is colored by memories of my own childhood as I witness the experiences of my youngest. As I've written about before, when I was growing up, our family went to the same place every summer. We did the same things - swim, bike, read, eat cherry pie and ice cream, watch the sunset, shop in little gift shops, and take a hike or two. Occasionally neighbors would take us out on their boats. My dad, brothers, and grandpa fished. A couple of times, I went on the charter boat, but I mostly read. We didn't mind doing the same thing every year - we craved tradition.
My own children have different memories. Visiting the grandparents has been our tradition, but we've done a lot of different things in the summer the last few years. We have gone to the lake many times, but not every year. My youngest had few memories of it before last summer. Now that we have gone twice in a row, she has memories of the places and people. But her experience is so different - instead of a handful of cousins around the same age, it was just she and my niece this year. They play quieter games than their brothers did at the same age. When I was that age - 10 - I had two cousins and a sister to pal around with, but I also loved solitary time. I was a reader and a dreamer. I liked to spend time at the lake drawing and painting and writing stories. I wanted to hike up into the woods. In White's essay, he watches his son play in the water and feels time condensing - he is both his son and his father in that moment. Mortal and immortal through memory. I experience a similar emotion when I watch my daughter, but I also am missing not just my own childhood summers, but the childhood summers my children experienced. Nostalgia threatens to overwhelm at times.
Meanwhile, reading a book about nostalgia on the flight - Ann Patchett's Tom Lake, which as I mentioned takes place in upstate Michigan - reminded me of how unreliable memory can be, and how some memories are resurrected at surprisingly or unexpected times. Visiting the cherry orchard I remembered made me realize I didn't remember the cherry orchard as it was, but rather I remembered what it meant to me. I either never knew or never absorbed the connection of the orchard to Bruce Catton. How often my memory is untrustworthy! I biked to it this summer and stopped to take a few photos, but it no longer is a thriving orchard. Even though house looked tired. I didn't poke around much because I didn't want to trespass, but I remember posing for photos among the trees one summer with my sister and cousins when we were in high school - pre-digital photo/selfie days, but at that age when we loved to envision ourselves as models. We were beautiful - maybe not by worldly standards - but in our awkward, hopeful, unique ways.
So here we are - five weeks after this vacation, and I'm just getting around to finishing this post. Somehow this summer has not had the time for the reflection that I was hoping to find.
