The Lake Made Me Sick

When I was little, I lived in a house near a lake. Not a big lake or some luxury water sports paradise. Just a lake that grew from a canal and made neighborhood backyards a little more picturesque than they would've been. Looking at it from Google Earth, one can see it's not Lake Tahoe, but it's a body of water larger than a puddle, and that's good enough for suburbians.

This lake wasn't special, but it made for a nice backyard, and I suppose the ducks visited often and we would give them food. I have a distinct memory of my dad holding one and me freaking out when it waved its wings. Maybe that's why I strongly dislike ducks now.

There was a red canoe, which apparently I did go on once, but I don't remember. But the canoe belonged to our landlord as did the Chinese-style gazebo that I always longed to lounge in but never had the freedom to. I felt as if everything belonged to him, even that lake.

This sounds like a charmed childhood, and for the most part it was except that I often had bouts of bronchitis, and the doctor said it was because we lived by a lake.

According to my parents, when we moved, I stopped getting sick. Now, I only get sick about once every two to three years.

But I'll always wonder though if the lake was really that bad. Sure, it was nondescript, but I wasn't one to play outside very much. How was something so pure-looking so toxic to me?

There's a lake in the neighborhood we live in now. It's not in our backyard, and we never go visit it. And there may be a lake behind my window, but a giant tree that looks more like a bush on steroids blocks most of my view. For a while before that tree became an overachiever, I could see several small bodies of water that I called lakes even though they were separated by little more than ridges of dirt. The rain would wash away the distinctions and make everything the same.

I swam in a classmate's lake for an end-the-year party. It made my hair and skin smooth and I loved the feeling of the mossy rocks against my toes.


I've been trying to find an enchantment for my relationship with lakes. They haven't followed me around really, and I'll always prefer the ocean. But there's something about the placidity of a lake, the way the wind moves above the surface just so--just gently enough to make it seem that it's constantly moving. The way it reflect the color of the sky truer than the ocean does. Lakes just seem to make anyplace more serene. Even the little sliver of lake I can see from my window makes me feel calm.

So the enchantment seems to be this: Nature. Just nature.