Lake Winnebago

3

May 21, 2023

September 23, 1985

Dear Charlie,

I came home from school today, ate a bowl of Cheerios and swam in the lake. Lake Winnebago, that is. I know it’s late in the summer to be swimming —or is it already fall? It certainly feels like it today. But I can’t resist being tossed by chilly whitecaps, the near-nakedness of my body swallowed and reborn by my wet, temperamental friend.

You set out over stormy waters today too. I hope that when you left the shores of Frankfurt, Michigan, your belly was warm from both feast and friends. I hope that the waters of Lake Michigan, only a few hundred miles from my inland puddle, embraced you with the 360 degrees of aliveness you were seeking, your sails loyal to the distant shore, but your heart caught happily somewhere in between.

I wonder if we were both reborn at the same time.

Lake Winnebago is not just a body of water. It’s a family member. Algonquian tribes called their Ho Chunk neighbors inhabiting the shores of this shallow, freshwater lake near the eastern border of Wisconsin the Winnebagos. This translates to “people of the filthy water.” I love the filth — the thick, green sludge that accumulates in summer waters. August swimming lines my suit with fertile, photosynthetic organisms. I peel my one-piece off and wash the green from my skin, but I’m not repulsed like my friends. These waters are my amniotic fluid, my sustenance. I swim when I’m happy. I swim when I’m sad. When weather stirs the water into whitecaps, I throw my body into their walls of unapologetic power. When the surface is glass, I sit cross-legged on the sandy bottom and listen to a murky underworld. Only later in life will we question the magnitudes of algae and die-off — the inevitable explosion of life from agricultural run-off. Fertilizers and pesticides have steadily polluted these waters, suffocating the natural balance of aquatic life. But innocence is bliss. To me, the warm stench and the bobbing balls of neon blue-green are an integral part of childhood. They are childhood. My senses are at once assaulted and surrendered to Lake Winnebago’s reckless cycles of life and death.

I wonder why it is so easy for me to surrender in water. In my terrestrial existence, I am willful and persistent. “By self!” — one of the first sentences to throw itself from my young vocal cords — was used with authority for years. I love having a goal, turning off all other distractions and forging toward it. I wave my magic wand and make the impossible possible.

One blustery, winter day mom and dad step into their cross country skis for a trek through fresh powder along the frozen shore of Lake Winnebago. Mom ties a rope around her waist, loops it through the front of a plastic sled and I plop five-year old limbs down into my purple chariot. Her legs glide through the snow and I let the scenery press its slow, barren story into my vision. The wind chill is below zero and my cheeks tingle as winter exhales onto the pink circumference of my exposed face. Dad’s mustache is filled with snot icicles. Mom’s tiny waist and ample hips sway back and forth in her red, one-piece jumper.

From a distance, I spot a brown, skipping shape on the horizon. An early Easter bunny? A large squirrel? It is headed in our direction and mom veers toward the shoreline to grab it when it tangles in the low, bony branches of a tree. She is a ruby promise amidst a vast landscape of white, harsh sleep. Bending over, she untangles the object, crumpled now into a small shape in her fist, and shoves it into her pocket. But as she turns to look back at me, the object catches on her ski pole strap and is free once again. This time, it is lifted by a strong, westward gust and is thrown back in my direction.

I watch it blow past me, not a bunny or a squirrel, but a baggie from our local Piggly Wiggly market. Mom calls out “Grab it Kimmy!” but inside my snow suit, my limbs move like they are encased in marshmallow fluff. My eyes, uninhibited, track the bag with ease, priming my limbic system to do what it loves to do. One moon boot in front of the other, I roll out of the sled and start plodding through snow as high as my waist, never losing sight of my prey.

Mom calls out through the blasting, sideways gusts, “Leave it be! Come back!” But I can’t. Time, will, and the limitations of flesh will determine the baggie’s fate now.

I chant out loud, “I think I can. I think I can.” Eyes fixed. Legs lifting in and out of thick powder. The snow makes my legs impossibly heavy. The wind shoves me in the other direction. I start to feel cold from the inside out and a dull ache rises from my belly that longs to be near mom again. But I don’t give up. I shove down the ache under the bigger drug of pursuit. Two feet below my boots, the ice shifts as a crack begins to form between my will and my want. My mind says go forward, my flesh says go back. I think I can, I think I can.

But the hot, damp breath inside my scarf is hypnotic comfort. The slow, rhythmic crunch of my boots in snow is my beat. As long as I have my eyes on the goal, I feel connected to everything, playing my part in Winnebago’s Waltz of the Snow Flakes.

The baggie eventually finds another tree to tangle with and its fate is mine. I continue chanting “I think I can, I think I can” as I approach, watching it flap helplessly against a broken branch. Once it is within arm’s reach, I stop. The first pause since my pursuit began. My face is numb but I want to savor this moment. When it flew out of mom’s pocket it was full of possibility — east, west, north and south, all unwritten chapters — now its only destiny is in my hand. But I don’t want it yet. The reward isn’t mom’s appreciation. The reward isn’t the flimsy plastic bag. If my legs weren’t tired and my cheeks wind burned, I would kick it out of the tree limb and continue the chase, doped-up on my own pharmacological edition of The Little Engine That Could. The reward is the hunt. And when the hunt is over, I feel empty.

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