It’s ironic, I suppose, that in my daily efforts to absorb the French culture, I can often appear (although you wouldn’t know it to look at me) somewhat German. They have a saying, “nah am Wasser gebaut sein,” which literally means “to be built close to the water.” It describes someone who cries easily, gets teary-eyed quickly, or is very sensitive. Even with all of my grandmother’s “Swede,” I, being born in the land of 10,000 lakes of Minnesota, clearly resemble that remark, both literally and figuratively. I like having the words for it now, even in German.
I was never afraid of the water, neither wave nor tear. My mother saw to that. She drove me to swimming lessons in the dead of winter at the community indoor pool. And she dried my long blonde hair afterwards, somewhat frozen waiting only briefly for her in the parking lot. And just as important, she taught me the strength of being able to show my emotions. Tears of tenderness she called them. Never weakness. So much strength. Even joy. She saw me through the winters of all living.
I’m proud of where I “was built.” No matter where I am, it is where I will be, close to the tender water.
It was a year ago that I was swimming in Lake LeHommeDieu. It was perhaps unusually warm for a September afternoon. But what surprised me the most is how far I had to go to get deeper.
I suppose everything seems “far enough” when you’re young. The distance from shore. What we give to each other — our family, our friends. Maybe I thought it was accumulative, giving this friendship. This love. But I’m not sure that it is. I think the more we live, the more we need to give. Every day. And not just for others, but for ourselves.
Each year as I grew in the cold of winter, I found my summer self going deeper. Wanting to. Needing to. And sure, it was a little scary, wandering further from the safety of shore. But oh, how exciting. How joyful to be in the deep.
In life and in love, I want to do the same — get in way over my head. Daring to feel it all. Give it all. In every shade of blue.
It might sound silly, but I always thought the water remembered me. Remembered how far I went out the year before. Knew how much I had grown, and encouraged me to keep going. Buoying me when my feet no longer touched the bottom.
On the hardest of them, I like to think the day remembers me as well. Knows how much I can handle. Tells me how much I have grown. Encourages me to keep going. Of course some days I’m frightened, but I learned long ago, I’m only ever buoyed in the deep.
Maybe it’s because the brain and the heart are composed of about seventy percent of it. Or maybe it’s because I grew up in the midst of 10,000 lakes. But I have always been comforted by the water. The color blue.
It feels certain – this color blue. Like the words of a favorite song. Words that come so easily. Without thinking. Rolling gently in. Words that comfort. Caress. Hold. Gather. So I paint it, this song, this color and I am home.
When I was a young girl, and we lost our home, we (my mother and I) moved to an apartment. And when you lose a home, you don’t just lose the walls — you lose the familiar, the comfort, the neighborhood. You lose the sound of screen doors swinging. Mothers calling kids home for dinner.
Everything changed. I could no longer identify the cars passing merely by the sound of their tires on the gravel. I couldn’t smell the lake from across the street. I had lost the certainty of “blue.”
And being young, I could only see so far ahead. I believed what was in front of me. I believed there were these 10,000 lakes. No more. I believed there was a home. One home. No more. We were given only so much.
OH, to be so joyfully wrong! Well, I was right about one thing – we are “given” a finite amount – but that doesn’t mean we can’t go out and get more on our own. Find more. Search. Build. I learned if I wanted to have a home, I had to make one. First in my heart. Then in my head. I needed to feel the water flowing through them both. The cool, comforting blue carried within. This was my home. Is my home. My 10,001. (and counting.) No one can ever take that away.
The world, people, will always throw out limitations. Struggles. It, they, will try to block you, box you in. But you don’t have to be one of them. They can tell you that “you can’t…” “you don’t…” you aren’t…” But listen to the water. It’s still flowing. Softly, gently, telling you, “aaah, but I am!”
