Did I Just See a Turtle? - Lakeville Lake
Our family had a cottage on Lakeville Lake in Oakland County, Michigan. I don't remember the name of the township or even the road the cottage was on, but I can still picture how we got there.
Coming from the Detroit area, we would drive into Lakeville and make a left turn at a T-intersection. We would continue for perhaps half a mile or three-quarters of a mile, then turn right onto another road whose name I no longer remember. After going a short distance, we would turn left again. Our cottage was on the right, near the end of a little dead-end dirt road, next to another cottage on the corner.
The cottage had been in our family for as long as I could remember. My understanding was that my father and his brother, my Uncle Otto, had purchased either the land or the cottage itself for my grandmother. I never knew all the details of that arrangement, but that was the family story as I understood it.
Looking back at family photographs, I can see myself at Lakeville Lake as a toddler. Those pictures tell me that I was there before my parents moved our family to Long Island, New York.
What is interesting is that, until I began writing these stories, I had never really thought about the gap in those years. I was at Lakeville Lake as a very young child, then we moved to New York, and after returning to Michigan I began going to the cottage again, probably when I was seven or eight years old.
It took writing these memories down for me to recognize that interruption in what I had always thought of as one continuous childhood experience.
The cottage remained in the family for many years. In fact, Jean and I spent our honeymoon there after we were married in 1962.
After our wedding, we went on with our own lives, including our time in Illinois, and gradually lost our connection with the cottage. As I think about it now, I cannot remember ever returning there after our honeymoon. It may well have been the last time I set foot in the place that had been such a part of my childhood.
The cottage stayed in the extended family for some years afterward. I believe it may eventually have been sold by my cousin Beverly, who passed away last year. She had married and had a son, and by then her parents had also passed away. I don't know exactly when or why the property was sold.
Those are some of the memories that establish the place Lakeville Lake occupied in my life. But the particular memory I want to preserve in this story is about swimming, my father, and a turtle.
Learning to Swim
I don't remember exactly how I learned to swim, but I have a vague recollection of being encouraged to get into the water from the end of our dock.
I wasn't exactly thrown off the dock, as sometimes happened to children in those days. Rather, I remember being encouraged to get off the dock and into the lake. Somehow, through that experience and whatever instruction followed, I learned to swim.
What I remember much more clearly is watching my father in the water.
At some point, I noticed something unusual about the way Dad swam. He spent nearly all his time underwater.
I watched him for a while, and eventually I came to a conclusion that I continued to verify over the years: my father apparently could not swim in the conventional way.
I never saw him swim on his back. I never saw him swimming along with his head above water, as most swimmers do. And I don't remember ever seeing him dive.
Instead, he had developed his own peculiar method of getting around in the lake.
He would put his head underwater and swim along for a while. Then, when he needed air, his head would suddenly pop above the surface. He would take a breath, turn if necessary, and disappear underwater again.
He could move from one place to another perfectly well using this method. It was simply unlike anything I had seen other swimmers do.
And the more I watched him, the more he reminded me of a turtle.
A turtle swims underwater, then suddenly brings its head above the surface to breathe. It looks around for a moment, and then down it goes again.
That was Dad.
His head would pop up, he would take his breath, and then he would disappear beneath the water, only to reappear somewhere else.
I found it amusing and rather remarkable that a grown man could get around in the water so effectively without ever swimming in what I considered the ordinary fashion.
I never forgot it.
Decades Later
Now, many decades later, whenever I see a turtle swimming in a lake or sticking its head above the surface, I sometimes find myself thinking about my father.
It brings back the image of him at Lakeville Lake, swimming underwater, surfacing for air, and then disappearing again.
And it is a pleasant memory.
Of all the things that might remind me of my father, I find it rather special that one of them is simply seeing a turtle.
That little image has stayed with me for most of my life, connecting me to my father, our family cottage, and those childhood days at Lakeville Lake.
And maybe now you will, too.