A memory of summer

Summer on Lake Memphremagog seemed to last forever. I looked forward to spending the summer at our family retreat in Canada all year long. When I returned home to the humidity of late August in Summit, NJ, I felt like a stranger in my own house. It seemed I had been away for a lifetime.

When I was five, I learned to swim off the dock with my father’s help. He’d stand, long legs reaching down to the stony lake bottom and long arms reaching out towards me. I clung to the wooden ladder, reluctant to leave my perch. Eventually I jumped and he caught me as I plunged into the cold water. From that day on, I was rarely out of the water. Even on chilly days, I was in, bobbing in the waves, clutching a shiny black inner tube.

“You are warm blooded!” my Aunt Peggy called out on a particularly cool day. “What does that mean?” I wondered.
Isn’t everyone warm blooded? Maybe grown ups are cold blooded. I noticed they didn’t go swimming as much as I did and only on warm, sunny days. My parents and Aunt Peggy preferred to sit on the wooden dock playing Scrabble, smoking Player’s cigarettes and eating chocolates.

I truly pitied them. “What a boring life they have!” I thought as I floated and paddled and kicked around in the cool water. “I am so glad I am warm blooded!”

Note: The above photo is of our friends, Susie and Linda Corby when they visited us at the Lake. Being the youngest of four children, my parents had tired of taking photos by the time I came along. They had aquired a movie camera by then and somewhere there may be some scratchy footage of me jumping in the water, but I doubt it. My parents were otherwise occupied! I include the photo to show the actual ladder I clung to, complete with my mother's white bathing cap and a deflated inner tube.