To the Lake …

Those of us who are devoting time to writing the histories of other people tend to forget that WE have recordable histories too — sometimes mundane, sometimes life-changing.  In writing to a colleague recently, I discovered that I have left unwritten my own childhood memories of a place that I know is by now so changed that it may no longer truly exist as it still does in my mind’s eye.  That alone is cause for grieving and then getting down to work immediately to  record the memory and be able to share it some day with my own children.  What triggered all this was reading  a tiny gem of an essay by E.B. White, about long-ago summers spent at “the lake.”  If you have not read it, drop everything now that it’s August, and find it at http://www.moonstar.com/~acpjr/Blackboard/Common/Essays/OnceLake.html.

As for your own “lake,”  do get to work on remembering it.  Soon.  It’s history worth keeping. (August 8, 2010)