Up north in through the looking glass.

Last week we biked to a restaurant on the water and sat in the grass watching the planes taking off. On the water, little sailboats with colorful sails kept flitting by, and I suddenly had a memory of sailing with my father on Lake Michigan.

Every summer he would pull the Kingfisher out from the crawlspace under the cottage and drag it down to the water. It was old, perhaps older than him, the sailboat his uncle or grandfather or cousin taught him to sail in when he was a child, and on the verge of rotting, but year after year it remained just seaworthy enough for us to still take her out. I sat perched on one side of the little boat as we flew through the water, the metal rungs of the sail occasionally clapping against the mast, my father across from me as I waited expectantly for his instructions to duck and clamber over to the other side. He never taught me to sail, never offered. I suspect neither of us would have had the patience for it. But in those fleeting moments we were together, at peace.

On Friday I boarded one plane and then another and landed back here, the land of my memory. My cousin is getting married and the whole family is here, all of the aunts and uncles and cousins I haven’t seen in years. I take a quiet walk alone along the beach and am flooded with more memories.

My uncle teaching me to kayak. My grandmother inviting us to join her on her endless search for the perfect rock. My aunts sitting or reading or chatting (My aunts teaching me what it means to rest). My uncle and I talking deep into the night as the bonfire smoldered to nothing. Pie for breakfast. A crowded kitchen. My grandmother always packing the most perfect little games and toys for the long road trip home.

The water is so blue and then so green I almost cry. My phone cannot capture it. I step into the water and feel the sand under my toes, then the rocks, then more sand. I gingerly step away when I feel the earth squish under my feet: “muck.” And another memory. My aunts taking us out in the water, teaching us where to step, how to move.

Along the shore freshwater springs bubble up from the ground and flow down to the lake, making ripples in the sand. The water is so cold my feet begin to tingle. My father and uncle spent many fruitless hours trying to redirect the spring’s flow over to the log their grandfather had made a waterfall out of many years before.

I am the oldest of the cousins. This trip I find for the first time that I am also now the keeper of memories to which they have no access. First jobs, burgeoning relationships, weddings, big moves, alcoholism, babies, divorce. I watched our parents saunter and stumble through life, much of it from this beach or from the yellow clapboard cottage up the hill.

I think: this is a place that once belonged to me. That made me. I am grateful.