Lakes scare me. I don’t know why. The bodies of water, sitting still, amidst the woods, nestled in the mountains, or spread across a prairie or stretched across tundra or snow-skinned fields, they all scare me, these lonely sentries of the ocean, sitting and watching, reporting, waiting to once again be part of the mother, the ocean, and drown us all.
I relayed this fear to my aging mother, who I visit twice each week at the Grand Hills Assisted Living Facility, just past the hospital, on the edge of the woods and, ironically, only steps from the man-made Hopkins Lake, where water sat still and glassy, some of the perimeter staked with concrete viewing areas and railings. They took the seniors down there once a week. None were allowed to go on their own, but, according to my mother, the rowdier, more careless seniors did it all the time.
“That lake is scary,” I said to her on one of my visits. We were in the commons area, a big room, full of deep redwood tables and light, padded cedar chairs. Windows surrounded us and the sun came in nearly unabated.
“That’s a pretty lake,” my mother said, “Prettier than this damn room that smells like Pine Sol all the damn time. Better to go out there and smell real pine, not some damn laboratory pine stink.”
My mother sat straight up in her chair. A copy of Redbook lay upside down in front of her. I turned it rightside up and, in another moment, she turned it back upside down again.
“Somebody should be watching them, though,” I said. “Wandering off to the lake. That’s not good.”
My mother bristled, her brow changing shape. “Nobody can tell me where I can go or not. I didn’t make it to 109 years old just to be told what to do. I’ve forgotten more than some of these folks working here will ever learn. They ought to be asking me what, what all they need to do to run things.” She pointed her finger, a stubby staff ruined and twisted by arthritis. “After 109 years of living, you got license to run things.”
“You’re not 109 years old,” I said.
“Okay, maybe 107.”
“You’re 90, mom,” I said.
“By your figuring,” she said.
She just sat there, glassy-eyed, large upon the landscape, a child of the ocean of heaven herself. I realized then that she was just like a lake, a giant piece of an even bigger monolith. A representative of something huge. I stood at her shore and marveled at her stillness, her expanse.
For a second, mom had allayed my fears, like she’s done for 109 years, and she looked cooling and tranquil and, so, I leaned for the calm, soothing waves in her eyes, and I gave her forehead a kiss.
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