(Re)collect

Recollecting myself at summer’s end.  I feel a tenderness that in the past I might have called sadness but what I now feel is an open-hearted softness threaded with joy. At the lake where I swim almost every evening in summer it is now getting colder.  The sun is setting earlier. I swam under mauve blue skies this evening.  The water is smoother, darker, and colder in September.  I saw the red full moon rising on my shivering ride back to my cabin.   I am not yet ready for the cold or the dark.  I want another month of evening swims at the lake.  I will miss seeing the small band of other water pilgrims who find their way to the lake each evening for their own ablutions.  Some have become friends.  We love this lake in the high hills of Western Mass.

As fall approaches, I am flooded with recollections of this lake.  The times I camped and swam naked at night and then again as the sun was rising.  The times with my daughter.  The many September nights I have lamented the end of summer, the end of this swimming.  In the 35 years I have lived near this lake, I have spent only a few summers away. And what I missed most was this lake.  I have found no other place else like it, the balm that pulls anxiety and worry out of my skin and covers me with a silky lover’s touch.

 I have loved other lakes and I recollect them all during this time of gathering. I recently visited the lake where I spent my childhood summers.  As I swam, it was if we were all there together again my grandmother and grandfathers, my mother and father still young with dark black hair laughing on the beach with friends.  Time in this recollection collapses onto itself as presences and visitations come out of the shadows.

 I feel such tenderness this time of year for what is changing, for the very long winter that awaits, for the darkness and all the losses. In my recollecting, I take into my heart all these past selves, all those gone, all that I still hope for.  Tenderness for the lake’s love.  Tenderness for time passing. Tenderness the energy that transforms, heals, and prepares us for winter.