Time

My parents are selling their lake house. They have only lived in it for 12 years. But the land is where our old summer camp used to be. Our camp was a big old sprawling construction with a large screened in front porch and bedrooms that housed hornets and bats and stories and slumber parties. When we were kids we were convinced that the house was once owned by a captain and that it was built on Indian Burial ground. They bought the place when I was only 18 months old and so all of my childhood summers were spent up there. My brother and I, with our summer birthdays, would host sleepover parties that would go on for days and always involve a campfire and marshmallows and sometimes even a night spent on the rocky beach. When I was 22 my parents decided to make the lake their permanent residence. They sold our family home, tore down the camp and built a beautiful new house. This house was home to many twenty something parties. Christmas gatherings. Margarita inspired midnight swims.
However, as my parents grow older they have come to realize that they want to be closer to town and so they made the difficult choice to let the place go. They weed through boxes of photos and papers and children’s drawings. They sell and give away hard earned and well cared for pieces of furniture. They can’t take it with them. They don’t need it anymore. They sift and sort and cry and continue on.
We went up to the house last night for one last fire on the beach. Somehow it didn’t seem real that life had come to this moment. How did we get here? Before dinner began I slipped outside with Julien and sat by the lake to stare off at the water. There were no last glowing sunsets. No grand finale of nature. It was just a simple quiet, somewhat cool, gray evening. The lake was so clear and calm that I could see black and white stones lining the waters floor. It was the kind of night my brother and I as kids would have loved to dive for clams or gather precious rocks for collections. It was a perfect night for the twenty-something Susan to take a Kayak out on the water or go skinny dipping with friends. But here I was, thirty something Susan sitting with my new wiggling and jumping little baby just watching the water and wondering where the time had gone. I could hear the voices in the house mixed with music and laughter. Lukas was instructing his cousin Tessa in the best way to jump on the couch. My sister in law was laughing. My brother was talking about the dinner he was preparing. I looked down at the large boulder by the waters edge. It’s about the size of a car and yet over the years it has moved from one end of the beach to the other simply by water and ice. I remember climbing on it as a kid. It seemed so enormous. I imagined being an old woman and coming back to this beach and that rock would still be there, unchanged but perhaps moved. “It’s just passing.” I said to Julien through my tears. “Life is just passing.” “Slow down.” I whispered to the mountains across the lake.
We had our last fire. We sang songs and told stories. We cuddled the children. A thunder storm threatened. No great words were spoken about the past or the future. We just shared one last fire together at the lake. Later that night when we came home Lukas insisted that I read him a story. It was after 10 but I didn’t have the strength to argue and so he picked a story and snuggled up with me on the couch. He chose a book illustrated by Eric Carl called The Tiniest Seed. It is about a flower whose seeds are blown by the wind and go on a great journey. Not all the seeds survive but the tiniest seed does and it grows to be a beautiful flower whose seeds are then in turn blown by the wind on their own great journey. Lukas said “and then that seed will become a flower and then it will make seeds and those seeds will blow and then they will become flowers and more and more.” I smiled and said “Yes, that’s called the life cycle.” He paused and said…”sort of like the water cycle.” “Yes” I said.
“They both go round and round.” We sat quietly together.
Then I sang.
”And the seasons they go round and round and the painted ponies go up and down. We’re captured on a carousel of time and we go round and round and round in the circle of life.”
“Why are we captured?” He asked.
“Because we can’t get off. Life just keeps moving and time keeps passing and if we want to be a part of life we just have to keep moving with it. So we are captured… or maybe we are held by the carousel of time. Maybe that sounds nicer.”
Then I carried my sleepy boy up to bed and lay down beside him. I snuggled my almost four year old son and listened to the rain fall steadily outside the window giving water to the late August flowers. Fall would be coming soon.