Okay Kids

Okay Kids!

“Okay kids, I hope that you have all your stuff together for the trip. It is time to get into the car and drive to Lake Francis for a wonderful time in the cottage that we always rent at this time of year.” As soon as he finished saying those words both inside his mind, and outside it with a loud voice, Lloyd sighed. “Who am I kidding? I am going to the lake and to the cottage all by myself for the very first time. My son and daughter are grown up now and both moved far, far away a few months ago to get the jobs that they long have wanted. They both believe that it would be foolish to take a vacation just a short time after they were hired at the places where they now work. And then there is Lola, my lovely, loving wife who was killed in a car crash a short time after our last vacation.

I need the continuance of going to the place I love so much, the highlight of twenty years of two week long vacations by Lake Francis, and with my wife and two kids in the rented cottage that so much felt like going home.

The drive is an empty one. I see a deer on the side of the road, but I can’t point it out to anyone, even when my hand went in its direction. I see ‘our restaurant’ up ahead, the one we would always go into for breakfast on our way to the cottage. Do I stop there or not? I would need a positive story of why the others are not with me. I cannot come up with one, so I drive on by, a tear in both eyes. I am hungry, so I stop at a drive-through and eat in the car in the parking lot. Nearby there is the old family grocery store, where I stock up for my stay with enough hot dogs and beans for four people for two weeks.

It does not take long for me to get to the cottage and Lake Francis. I still have a key to the cottage that I have had for years, so I don’t have to go to the owner’s ‘mansion cottage’ (as we have long called it), a few miles away, and feel like a beggar.’ For the same two weeks in August for 20 years, this has been our family home. Now it is just mine to share with the beach, the trees and the memories, with no family to share I with..

As I walk into the cottage, I am very close to hearing voices and seeing faces that are not here anymore. I respond to them with what I would normally say. The emptiness kind of overwhelms me, so I decide to go outside and walk to the end of the dock so I can counter that with the fullness of the lake and the surrounding trees and cottages.

As I sit down, I think of when I taught the kids to dive. I used to have to restrain my laughter when they made especially bad dives, more splash than grace. I can still picture them, and a smile comes to my face. Beside it is a row boat upon which the kids and I used to fish, and occasionally hook each other, and even sometimes a fish or two.

I look across the lake, and see a boy, must be about ten years old or so, paddling a canoe. As I look farther, I see two adults, most likely his parents, standing on the shore. I can’t perceive the looks on their faces, but I can see that they are waving their arms rather frantically. It seems to me that the boy probably did not ask his parents permission.  I had a few similar experiences when the kids were a lot younger.

Then I see the kid’s canoe tip over after a particularly awkward paddle stroke. He soon is flailing and splashing in the water in the middle of the lake. I then notice that there is no other boat tied to the dock upon which the parents were standing. I move quickly to the rowboat beside our dock. The oars are placed strategically inside of it. Soon I am paddling like mad. The boy is holding onto the canoe like his life depends on it – not just an exaggeration I believe. It does not take me long to get to him. I doubt if I ever paddled so fast in my life. I haul him into the boat, almost joining him in the lake.

Eventually the kid and I manage to get to the shore in front of the people’s cottage. I am almost as relieved as the kid is. I haven’t paddled a canoe in years, and I was not all that great back then.

The kid’s parents run over to the beach on which we landed. The father grabs the kid by the arms and pulls him out of the rowboat. Both parents look at me and shout at the same time, “You have saved the life of our Luther. We are ever so grateful”. Then the father asks me “What can we do to reward you for this ever so bold rescue sir?

I was going to say that the act done successfully is the greatest reward that I could possibly receive, but instead I said, much to my own surprise, and certainly theirs “What are you having for dinner? I am a horrible cook, and I only have beans and hotdogs in the refrigerator. There was silence and then group laughter coming from the parents, the child, and me.

“Dinner shall be your reward’, said both parents at almost exactly the same time.

We walk together to their cottage, and begin talking. They tell me that this is their first time on the lake, or any cottage. Bolder than I thought I would be, I told them about how, after 20 years, this was the first time I had ever been in the cottage alone.

Then the words came to me, “Okay kids, I hope that you have all your stuff together for the meal.”  Then they laughed, not knowing the full significance of what I had just said.