February 27, 2020

Go Home Lake

I read today that my wife got married again. For the third time. Including the time with me. That would make her my ex-wife. It’s been 20 years, but sometimes I forget. It was funny how I got to read her wedding announcement all the way here in Los Angeles. A patient of mine, another transplanted Canadian, had left a two-week-old copy of the Globe and Mail in my waiting room. I found it that afternoon while cleaning up. Nathalie, the receptionist I share with another doctor, is supposed to do that kind of stuff, but she has acting classes on Monday nights. Living out here, that’s the kind of stuff you have to put up with.

I can’t tell you why I began skimming through an old newspaper, although as a practising psychiatrist I should be able to analyze it. It would be interesting to ask Dr. Freud why he thought I turned to the social announcements.

The paper was two weeks old.

It was a big announcement. She for the third time. He for the second. Children from previous marriages. That kind of stuff.

I never remarried.

20 years ago.

It’s the seasons I miss the most. There was something that was so reassuring about a year broken down in those distinct quadrants. It is, I think, a much more satisfying, therapeutic really, fashion to measure the passing years. Winter, spring, summer, and fall. But, for the occasional aberration, everything could fit neatly into one of those four boxes, cubby-holing forever a part of our lives. The seasons each had their own rituals, holidays, and personalities. It was just a perfect sense of symmetry. Folks here on the West Coast make the mistake of equating the change of seasons with a change in the weather. They don’t get it.

Not all Canadians measured time in terms of the passing of the seasons. I first met Cathy at the campus bookstore at the beginning of the school term. We were sorting through huge stacks of books when she turned to me and said, “I love this season.” “Ah,” I nodded, “Fall.” “No,” she smiled at me as if I were a little boy asking if the earth was flat, “sweater season.”

We dated all through university and got married when I was in my second year of medical school. We spent a lot of seasons together before splitting up. A lot of snowfalls, changing leaves, changing diapers, and summers.

I remember the last summer we spent together. By the summer, I mean the two weeks we spent up at the cottage at Go Home Lake.

The summer of 1973. The summer of Watergate. The kids, of course, had the whole summer off, but these were the only two weeks I had managed to steal away from my practise. As a psychiatrist, I couldn’t afford to leave my patients for any extended period of time. I had wrangled the two last weeks of August. August 15th to Labour Day.

June and July had streaked by in a blurred succession of barbecues and Sundays spent cutting the grass. It rained in the beginning of August and I was silently planning a last-minute change to my preferred destination, Martha’s Vineyard. At the very least, I was ready and armed with 14 days of “I told you so”s.

We had rented the place, at Cathy’s insistence, from our next-door neighbours, the Karpanians. They had owned the cottage for the last 10 years but were planning on going back to the ‘old country’ for Labour Day. I never figured out whether the Armenia they were going back to was in Turkey or the Soviet Union. The truth was, I never really spoke much with the Karpanians. Just the perfunctory hello to Mr. K, as he was known in the neighbourhood, whenever we crossed paths. My wife was the social butterfly of the family.

I cut the grass. It was an arrangement we were both happy with.

The Karpanians had a houseful of brown-eyed, long-haired children. I’m not sure how many there were, only that each of their first names started with the letter A. There was Aram, Aida, Alice, and Alfred. Maybe one other. Like I said, I didn’t pay too much attention to the goings-on in the neighbourhood.

“We should vacation right here in Canada,” argued Cathy, who was an American herself. I think she would have been happy to go to the Cape but was punishing me for all the years I had boasted of misspent summers there. “The Karpanians are going to be gone. They hardly want any money for it. And besides, it’ll be great for the kids.”

She was right and I knew it.

Thing is, I was an ocean guy, always have been. Something about saltwater going up my nose and sand down my shorts. There was nothing like it. Still, two weeks up north was not an altogether unpleasant thought. It would be cheap and the kids would love it. Besides, I was a real sucker for the name. Go Home Lake. The name conjured up early morning canoeing amongst migrating loons and spawning trout. It evoked billowing smoke from campfires and late-night howling from distant wolves.

I looked it up in my map of Ontario. You take the 400 until it turns into Route 69. The lake lay just to the west of the highway. I circled it in red magic marker and showed it to the kids.

“You’ve shown us the map a trillion times, Dad,” they sighed in unison.

“Finding it on the map doesn’t mean you’ll be able to find it in your car,” chimed in Cathy. “You know how you are with directions.”

“Yeah, Dad.”

I’m the only man in a house of three women. My wife, Cathy, and I have two girls. Cindy, the youngest, is six, while Nicole is eight. They gang up on me all the time. It’s a girl thing. I don’t even mind that much anymore. They were right about my sense of direction. Mr. K had pointed out exactly the spot of his cottage, on the far side of the lake. It looked like it might be a little tricky.

We packed up the van and headed up right after my last patient on Friday afternoon. I have to admit I was well-prepared. Cathy likes to say that I’m a little anal. I don’t disagree with her. The van was loaded to the hilt with our bags, provisions, blankets, kerosene lamps, fishing rods, swimming paraphernalia, and whatever else I was able to think of. I even brought our television. The Karpanians, it appeared, were into roughing it. I was into comfort.

We sang camp songs all the way up. The only songs the four of us knew in common. “Oh they built the ship Titanic to sail the ocean blue.” “One hundred bottles of beer on the wall.” “The ants go marching one by one.” That kind of stuff.

The Karpanians’ cottage on Go Home Lake was a sturdy one-story log cabin. It was quite unassuming from the outside. It might have passed for Daniel Boone’s birthplace. “We’re not going to sleep here,” I remember Cindy stating when we drove up to it in the dark. The Karpanians had given me complicated, though precise, directions that involved driving on 10 miles of twisting country roads in the pitch dark. We came upon it suddenly, just when I was beginning to despair. We had trouble identifying the landmarks Mr. K had warned us about. I remember shining the high beams of the van as we unloaded and being pleasantly surprised upon entering the simple, though comfortable, cottage. In the morning, we discovered the lake, which lay only 50 spiralling steps from the cottage, the boathouse, and nearby creek. The cottage was placed strategically on the south side of the lake and thus had the benefit of sunshine on the dock and wraparound deck from morning to sundown.

We swam off the long floating dock and took the speedboat, with 50 hp Evinrude, across the lake, exploring the island cottages along the way. The second week, we came across the Karpanians’ fishing gear and under Cathy’s tutelage—she had grown up on Minnesota lakes—found the courage to bait a few minnows and worms. For years, Cindy and Nicole fought over who had caught the most fish.

I can’t tell you yesterday’s temperature, but I can state with certainty that Go Home Lake experienced zero rainfall during those two weeks in August. By Labour Day, we were tanned and healthy-looking. Those were the days before UV warnings. We used sun tan, not sun block.

20 years ago. I remember it well. Both Nicole and Cindy are married now. Kids even. Hell, I’m a grandfather. Cathy’s married too. But that’s another story.

20 years ago. I don’t speak to Cathy all that much anymore, but I’m sure she remembers those two weeks. We all remember that summer for different reasons. Cathy remembers it as the summer we conceived another baby. The one she miscarried. It was one of those freak things. One in 10,000, the doctors said. Go Home Lake evoked those types of memories. It’s not that we kept track of every time we made love, but that summer, between the kids and my practice, it wasn’t hard to figure out. It was the third night at the cottage. The evening was unseasonably warm and we bent our bedtime rules to allow the kids to sit around a big bonfire we had built in the Karpanians’ open pit. We ate hotdogs and roasted marshmallows. Cathy brought out her old six-string, she hadn’t played it for years, and strummed a few songs. At 11:00, we each carried a child in our respective arms and lay them gently in the Karpanians’ bunk beds. Later, after the fire had died out, we made love in the Karpanians’ queen-size bed. Months later, when the doctor confirmed Cathy’s suspicion, we were sure this was the fateful night. For three months, three happy months, that night had conjured up magical memories. And then it didn’t.

I remember the bonfire, the kids, and the lovemaking, although it is all a bit of a blur. What stands out though, aside that the heat had stuck around long after the sun had set, was the absence of mosquitos that evening. I will never forget the mosquitos at Go Home Lake. They descended like squadrons, feasting on our fleshy arms and legs. By Labour Day, all of our bodies were covered in bites and welts the size of silver dollars. I mention the mosquitos anytime we reminisce about that summer, but I’m the only one who has any recollection of this locust-like plague.

“Typical of you to remember the bad things,” said Cindy a few years ago at her engagement party when I reminded her of how her left eye had been so inflamed that she couldn’t see through it.

“Don’t you remember those mosquitos, Cind?” I rejoined. “They were bionic insects.” For every one we killed, swatted in midair, it was replaced by three more. They treated the bug spray we inflicted on them like canapés at a cocktail party. My body, of course, always turned out to be the main course.

“C’mon, Dad,” she whined, “that was the summer Nicky and I got up on water-skis for the first time. How do you expect me to remember a few bugs?”

I tried to explain these skeeters were the size of dragon flies but she was off introducing her fiancé to distant cousins.

Funny how people remembered different things.

Nicky still talks about watching The Sound of Music for the first time at the cottage. Cindy remembers water-skiing. Cathy, that night, and things that might have been. As for me, well, I would remember it as the summer of the giant mosquito if it hadn’t been for the bear.

Mr. K had given us very specific instructions on a host of different things having to do with the cottage. From the menial and mundane, where he kept certain pots and pans and the best way to start the hibachi, to the important, shallow waters to avoid while boating. He had been very particular about where we throw our garbage.

“A half-mile before the cottage, on Marina Road, you’ll see a big fence with two blue containers. These are the dumpsters for our cottage. Make sure that the garbage bags are well-secured and tied up before going. Go through the doors of the fence and throw the garbage bags into the dumpster. Never go at night.” This was the most I had ever heard Mr. K say at one time and as a result, I didn’t pay much attention. We saw the dumpster the second morning up north and I always made sure to properly dispose of our garbage.

The day before Labour Day, I gathered whatever we had left in the way of garbage and made my way to the dump. I had collected about six full bags as we had completed our final cleanup the previous afternoon and were getting rid of a lot of unwanted items. We were leaving early the next morning in order to beat the traffic back to the city, and I had promised the girls final water-skiing runs after our last hamburger of the summer. The lake in the early evening was like a sheet of glass and the kids loved to ski at that time. They had created quite a sensation on the lake because of the meteoric rise in which they had learned how to ski. As a result, I didn’t get to the dump until a little past dusk. In other words, well past the time Mr. K had instructed me to always dump the garbage. I had hoisted the second bag into the dumpster when I saw the bear.

Or rather, when he saw me.

He was 10 feet away, paws resting on the second blue dumpster. In the dark, I could’ve easily mistaken it for a fellow cottager getting rid of the last remnants of a summer stay. I might have made pleasant conversation about the run of good weather we had been having or about the traffic we would face heading back to the city. But the moon that night was full, affording me a clear view of this mammoth creature.

We eyed each other carefully. He with curiosity, me with an ever-growing fear.

It was a black bear. Years later, after doing careful reading on the subject, I would discover the black bear, unlike its brown counterpart, not to mention grizzly, was by and large a berry-eating animal and not a carnivore. It could, however, sever your hand with one playful swing of its paw. But I did not know that at the time. I did know that running, which had been my first instinct, was not a very viable option. What I did was stand transfixed for a while trying, in vain I might add, to regain what little I had left of my composure. The bear had come for some garbage here and I was surrounded by four more bags. Neither of us had moved for a minute, it could have been two hours, when I carefully picked up a garbage bag and heaved it over the bear’s head into the direction of the woods from which he had presumably come. My plan was to distract him enough with whatever debris I had by my side so that I could make a hasty getaway.

The first bag elicited zero response. Not even a twitch.

Realizing the bear did not have eyes in the back of its head, I decided to throw the second bag to its right. Allowing, or so I thought, for a certain amount of peripheral vision. The toss, aimed for eight feet to the right, was exactly on target. Surely, he would smell Cindy’s half-eaten corn on the cob and saunter over, ignoring me for a brief though glorious moment.

He looked right but did not move.

My next throw was to the left. Before throwing it, I untied the knot and peered inside into the contents. Pecan pie. Could there be any doubt? I threw left, the leftover pecan pie lay invitingly not six feet away from where he growled.

Do bears growl?

But he did not move.

My last bag.

I was going to go right again. I just had a feeling about it. I took a few practise swings. It was a very similar motion Cathy and I used when throwing the girls back and forth when they were young. “One, two, threeeeee.” Child screaming gleefully would be passed from one parent to another. My mother could never bare to watch this. “What if one of you slips?” She would wonder. “Is this any way to treat a baby?” But we never slipped. Never dropped a baby. Never threw it in the wrong direction. Of course, the garbage bag, ladened with junk, was a lot heavier than a six-month-old baby. Still, the motion was the same and my first three tosses had landed right on their marks.

If only the bear could appreciate my marksmanship.

The last throw, however, was off target. I had aimed to the right but had released a little early. Sort of like hitting a baseball to the opposite field. Instead of landing eight feet to the right of the bear, it sailed through the air and hit him right on the chest.

I’ve never told anyone this story before. I never even mentioned it to my wife or kids. Partly, I guess, because I didn’t want to share it with anyone else, and partly because the ending was anticlimactic: the bear eyed me for a second and then dashed back into the woods. No last-minute heroics, no war wounds to show off, no brush with death—just me and my bag of garbage. Life is capricious that way. It decides its own endings.

Things were never the same after we lost the baby. I guess you’ve figured that out already.

She never forgave me for recovering so quickly. For not mourning enough. I don’t really know how to answer that. I had two wonderful kids and a wife I loved very much. She didn’t allow any display of joy in the house. After a while, I suggested she seek some counselling. She responded by suggesting I move out of the house. It was summer by then, but we weren’t really together anymore.

I won’t bore you with the details of how we tried to make it work during the next few years; it’s a story you’ve all heard before. In the end, all we were doing was hurting each other and the kids. This job came up in L.A. and I took it.

I still find it hard to understand how something which was good for so long can, in a wink of an eye, turn out bad.

I’ve spent 20 years trying to figure that one out.

You remember the good times, I suppose. Those final two weeks before Labour Day in the summer of 1973. We all remember it for different reasons. For me, it will always be etched into my brain as the summer I hit a black bear with a bag of garbage.

Even after all these years, with everything that has happened, it still puts a smile to my face.

The end.