On that one day when the sun was shining we walked around the lake. “Blubsie!”, the youngest shouted every time the path became deep black and impassable.
Sand, water and a stick – that’s all a boy really needs.
We walked behind him and took it all in: the discolored leaves, the water birds, the mushrooms, the winding forest path and especially that warm light between the trees. We didn’t have to look for shelter, just be careful not to slip in the mud.
My brother had just returned from America and told me about the first rain after a long period of drought in Knoxville. The mountain paths instantly became slippery. He had to hold on to branches and bushes, otherwise he wouldn’t have stayed upright.
My cousin told me how the wind at her local school (‘just in front of the bicycle shed’) can sometimes blow so hard that you think you’ll never get home again (‘but that turns out to be fine’).
The weather is a strange thing.
I thought about how I had swam in this hidden lake in late summer: alone and euphoric. On weekdays no one came, the water was clear and cool. One dive and you were away from it all. That feeling had disappeared lately in a gray mist of drizzle, but this was the one day when the sun shone.
“Blubsie!” the youngest shouted and waved his stick.
The walking woman who met us grabbed her dog by the collar as a precaution. My cousin remembered how afraid he used to be of dogs (‘even those little fluffy ones’). Now he is tall and calm and my youngest’s great hero.
On this one beautiful Sunday in the fall, we were not alone at the lake. A family was playing hide and seek behind the trees, children were shouting at the water’s edge, dogs were being walked. Everyone looked happy.
It was the first dry day after a long period of rain. It was also the only one – tomorrow it would be wet again. The sun wasn’t bright enough to dry the mud, wasn’t warm enough to go swimming, didn’t stay long enough to get out of the drizzle.
You could just slip on one of those days. We knew again what we were missing.