The lady in the lake.

Last week, I went home for my nephew’s graduation.

As we get older, we tend to have a complicated relationship with the concept of home; feeling some conflict between the home of childhood and young adulthood with the home that we have created since. In our memories, home is fixed – frozen in time and space and just waiting for us to return so that we can press play and the movie can continue.

My relationship with home is no different. My underlying belief that I am as important to home as home is to me always leaves me somewhat disappointed as I realize that I am not remembered – no longer connected to the daily happenings or the downtown sidewalk chatting.

But, there is something about home that lives deep within me that I have never tried to put in words because it feels so intimate, so deeply connected to the center of who I am. Even now, I am nervous as I type that the words will not paint the picture clear enough. I am nervous that mere words cannot capture the feelings of connection and belonging and oneness. The thing that draws me home, that speaks to me, that calls to my heart, is the lake.

The lake is a part of me and I am a part of the lake. Growing up, it was as most childhood friendships are: playing everyday, sitting together in safe silence, and constant companionship. Summer started on Memorial Day, no matter what the weather said, by jumping in the lake. Hearing her whisper, “Welcome back” was as much a part of the joy as the shock of the cold water. She smiled as we laughed and shouted that it wasn’t that bad once you got used to it.

As I grew older, I took my worries to her and she listened. Through every season, she whispered, “I am here with you.” And through every season, she was my confidant, my advisor, my voice of reason. I read her poems. I sang her songs. I went to her with my deepest fears. She became a part of my healing.

Life happens. We move away for love or jobs or a new adventure. I moved away from the lake for love twenty years ago. As the time away increased and the time spent near the lake decreased, I became more hesitant to go in the water; knowing that as soon as my feet touched, I would hear her say, “Welcome home” and her immediate acceptance of my being away would be a vivid reminder of parts of myself I was ignoring.

On far too many occassions now, I hear the lake call for me to come home, and I simply ignore it. I know that I could find healing there with her. I know that I could find peace. I know that I could find answers to questions that eat at me and I could find the strength to acknowledge the questions that need to be asked. Yet, I stay away – I stay busy. I find reasons to not go: work, kids, more work. You understand.

And so, as the time approached for my nephew’s graduation, I decided to go home and stay on the lake with my kids for a couple of days. I have always tried to share the lake with my children, but they do not hear her voice; they do not feel the same connection. To them, she is just a lake with fish and seaweed.

As I put my feet in the cold water, I said to her, “I have been away for so long.” She answered me, “Welcome home. I have missed you.” I realize that I have missed me too and I push my float out into the water. (I love the lake, but I, too, hate seaweed.)

I lay floating in the cool water, the sun warming my face, and it occured to me that I have been asking the same question since I was fourteen years old. “Who am I?” I feel the sun darkening my skin. “Who am I?” So many years of being who I was told to be, who I was expected to be – and so much pain when I didn’t get it right.

“Who am I?” I wrote my parents a letter when I was fourteen and the final line was, “Will the real Carin Reeve please stand up?” Dramatic, yes, but also real. The question is the same today. If I am not wife, mother, principal, then who am I? What defines me? What do I stand for? What am I supposed to do with my time?

I am floating and the questions come and then float away. They do not start a panic, as they would on most days. If I am not the trifecta of wife, mother, principal, then I am Carin. And Carin is floating. And somehow there is peace in that moment where there is no expectation. I don’t have to be a better floater than anyone else. I don’t have to be told all of the things that are wrong with me and my floating. I haven’t been left floating alone so that someone I love can go float with someone younger who wears a bikini and strokes the ego. It is just me and my lake.

And there, floating on my lake with the sun shining down on my face, I am enough.

It’s time to go back to reality; back to my life with a job, with responsibilities, with complicated relationships, and without the lake. But, I am wiser now and I can say more clearly who I am. I am someone who needs the lake, and so I will come back, with or without my kids, to float, to feel the shock of the cold water, to connect again, and to be me.