lesson 30: c'mon in, the water's just fine -but- make note of the current

"My best summer holidays ever were when a group of friends and I started renting cottages for a week or two every summer."

"Oh! Marshmallows!"

"Oh yeah baby. More s'mores that you can shake a stick at."

"Why would you want to shake a stick at s'mores? Wouldn't you want to eat them? What did you do while you were there other than wave sticks at pseudo-food items?"

"The days just drifted by. It was wonderful. Everyone would wake up when they wanted... shuffle to kitchen where our favorite lad had made coffee before he went fishing... walk out to the dock and breath the morning air... fantastic."

"Ah. So you didn't sleep in like you do now when you're on holidays."

"Pardon?"

"Well you mentioned morning air..."

She rolls her eyes at me and goes back into her trace-like revelry, "My fav-o-rite part was the swimming. Jumping off the dock first thing in the morning into a clear, clean, wide fresh water river."

"Brrrr."

"Just for a moment and then 100 ways of wonderful... Greatest feeling ever. Even better, I remember one night after we'd all been sitting by the fire..."

"Roasting marshmallows?"

"Yep."

"And hotdogs?"

"Are you hungry?"

"No... I just have food envy."

"Sorry. Of course."

"So the fire... Wow... burning stuff... that would be good."

"Oh ya... it must have been two in the morning or something, someone had a guitar, we'd all just been hanging out, talking what felt were big important thoughts, and kind of dreading our return to reality after the days where our biggest choices were to canoe or kayak... No one wanted it to end... Anyway, I decided to go for a swim under the stars and ended up just sort of floating."

"In the dark! Weren't you afraid of huge fish with massive teeth coming and taking you under?"

"Um... no," she says laughing, "there's no such thing as killer lake trout. Anyway, I could hear everyone still talking and laughing on shore and I felt transported, floating there, looking at the stars, picking out constellations... It was peaceful. Beautiful."

"I think you're exaggerating here. Probably you can only pick out the big dipper."

"Any-way... I have no idea how long I was floating along, but I looked up and realized that the current had taken me pretty far from cottage so I had to swim back quite a ways."

"Nice one. Were you scared."

"Just a little. I suddenly felt really alone. I swam back towards the laughter, my friends, the fire, and as beautiful as those moments floating away from them were, nothing felt as good joining them again."

"So the lesson?"

"It's in the title, baby."

"I'm not your baby."

"I beg to differ."