The Bay

On the second night we had a free write where we could come up with anything we wanted.  We sat on the deck again, watching the lake and it brought this memory to mind.  This would have happened around thirty-five years ago, so my memory is hazy as to the details, but most of the things in these paragraphs happened.  Maybe not exactly in the order that I remember them, and a couple of them may have even been from other outings on the lake or other memories not related to the lake at all, all mushed into one memory of a day spent fishing with my brother.

On the Bay

There’s a sense of memory drifting across the lake.  Not what one would expect.  You expect many things seated beside a peaceful lake, but sadness?  Does sadness even have a tactile feel?  An odor?  A taste?  A vision?  A sound?  Not exactly, but senses can draw out a memory that induces sadness.  Reminds you of forgotten times.  Associates you with a happy time to which you can’t return. 

It’s the smell of gasoline burning in the engine as the propeller churned the water into froth as we slowly made our way from the boat launch, up the Saginaw River and into the Bay.  The smell of worms that wriggled in your fingers, their slime coating the tips as you carefully threaded them onto the hook.  The coconut smell of the SPF50 that encased you, slathered head to foot (oops, you forgot the ears) so that you couldn’t sit in the vinyl seat, sliding off if you didn’t remember to wedge your bare toes against side.

It’s the sound of the silence in the middle of the bay, the calm slap of water against the boat, the faint sound of a distant motor as some other fisherman chugged his way to his own favorite ‘guaranteed fishing spot’, the static from the radio left on ‘just in case’.  The fissure of a can opening, the sharp metal pop followed by the slight fizz of carbonation.  The voice of my brother, telling me stories of the Grandpa who had owned this boat and the other Grandpa I never knew, stories of my mom and dad long before I was born (the advantage of a big age difference).  His laugh.  His jokes.  Keeping me in stitches so that I didn’t even notice my line pulling down as another fish stole my bait.

The taste of bologna and cheese on white bread.  Stale Doritos because we opened the bag in the truck before we launched because we couldn’t wait, so when we ate on the boat they didn’t have that fresh, crisp crunch.  The sweet slide of a newly opened Pepsi over the tongue, perfect on a hot day in the middle of a big lake, baking in the sun.

The coolness of the water from the first jump in, the way the water caressed your skin like a lover, though you’re ten years old!  How would you know that?  You make that comparison decades later when you rethink this memory of this perfect day.  The water refreshes skin burnt by the sun, already an angry pink and you just know your brother will get ‘that look’ from Mom, in spite of being an adult man with a full time job.  The metal side of the boat burns your palms as you grasp it to scramble back in, because your brother reminded you that the Great Lakes connected to the ocean and ‘was that a shark fin I see off the port bow?’

The end of the day, when the sun tiredly sinks toward the horizon, somehow making that blue sky an even deeper blue.  You thought, looking at the noon sky earlier, that nothing could be more blue, but you’re wrong.  This is a bluer blue.  You watch your brother pack away the gear and release the three fish you caught.  Their tails splash a little trail away from the boat as you lean over to see, the weight of both of you tipping the boat slightly, and the fish disappear down into the depths to return to their own loved ones.  The anchor is pulled up, an old and rusty anchor.  This is, after all, your Grandfather’s old boat.  It clunks and sits wetly on the floor, a little puddle pooling around it that you move your feet away from.  No need to get wet again.

The boat is gone and we’re much older now.  Gone is the boat and those idyllic days where it was just my brother and me.  He’s married with kids who are adults now.  His whole focus went from me to his family, as it should.  I grew up too, forged my own path in life, moved far away and our time together has dwindled down to once a year.  There’s no boat, and even if there were, there’d be no time to use it.  He has responsibilities and I have people to see on my fly-by visits.  Yet sitting here on the edge of a small Michigan Lake, my soul yearns to be ten years old again, covered in bandaids, sunscreen, mosquito repellant, with my hair in pigtails, burning to a crisp on a rusty old boat in the middle of the bay.  To have another day of just my brother and me.