The Lonely Space of Memory
Revisiting the lake of my youth, will life ever again be this happy, this good?
It begins with a sound.
The rhythmic lapping of water against the dock. That simple tempo awakens other sounds: the low growl of a boat engine in the distance, youthful laughter and shouts of “cannon ball.” The Beach Boys singing “Good Vibrations” followed by the keening vocals of Laura Nyro’s “Eli’s Coming,”
The floodgates open and a blanket of sun warms my 12 year-old body, and the odors of suntan lotion and my ripened bathing suit — is it ever washed? — recall few baths because a 14 mile length of lake stretches out from this northern shore, and summer… seemingly never ends.
Visiting this lake again, a painful nostalgia has me in its grip so many years later, and, like a sleepwalker, I am unwittingly lulled to the lonely space of memory.
Every summer growing up, my five siblings and I moved from town to a lake only 10 minutes away… yet a universe away… from mundane rules and stifling structure, and I felt we existed at its center. Located in a tightly packed grove of other seasonal “camps” (a Maine colloquialism for anything from a shack to a house)there was an army of other big families whose kids were more than ready to participate in the daily drills of…
