{"id":1035,"date":"2011-07-25T19:15:35","date_gmt":"2011-07-25T23:15:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.old.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=1035"},"modified":"2012-12-04T13:19:46","modified_gmt":"2012-12-04T18:19:46","slug":"playing-death-at-the-lake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/miscellaneous\/playing-death-at-the-lake\/","title":{"rendered":"Playing Death at the Lake"},"content":{"rendered":"

The gutsiest thing I ever did at the lake nearly killed me.\u00a0 The color of our family\u2019s lake in Minnesota, where four generations of Geist-O\u2019Brien-Walshes have happily cavorted for as many decades, is a deep, rich brown.\u00a0 Rumor has it iron turns the water that color, while other theories lean toward peat, but whatever the reason, the result is unlike any lake color I\u2019ve ever known elsewhere.\u00a0\u00a0 The water feels extra heavy in your palm, too, and it\u2019s deceptively easy to float on.\u00a0 It\u2019s like swimming in cool coffee, but with a pure, clean smell, where no moldy, putrid slime can grow.<\/p>\n

\"\"Half a foot down, your hand looks golden brown.\u00a0 A foot down, you can hardly see it at all.\u00a0 Wade three feet in, and you can\u2019t see your toes.\u00a0 When I was a teenager, I was scared of the darkness of the water, even though I swam in it daily.\u00a0 I could not tell how deep the water was, nor what might be swimming down there ready to gnaw off my ankles.\u00a0 I was especially uneasy out by the floating raft where I routinely swam with my siblings and cousins, so I learned to swim near the very top surface of the lake, never letting my legs shift vertically to the cooler water below.<\/p>\n

One day, I decided to overcome my fear once and for all.\u00a0 I decided to go down to the bottom.\u00a0 I was accustomed to the swimming pool at a club in the city where I could propel myself downward, feet-first, knowing that no matter how deep it was, I could bounce off the concrete at the bottom and shoot back effortlessly to the surface.\u00a0 So I imagined I would do the same thing in the dark water, touching down against a hidden sandy surface.\u00a0 I would finally know how deep it was and know that nothing could harm me.<\/p>\n

\"\"So I took a big breath, pointed my toes, and started down cautiously.\u00a0 It was colder there, and I looked back up through the water to the sky rippling above, while water gurgled in my ears and my bubbles rushed upward.\u00a0 My feet touched no bottom, so I swam back up into the air to breathe.\u00a0 The bottom, I\u2019d learned, must be farther down and it would take some effort to get there.<\/p>\n

I took another big breath, and this time I used my arms in serious reverse, pushing the water upward to plunge myself down as far as I could go.\u00a0 When still there was no bottom,\u00a0 I prepared my hands for another plunge and shoved myself downward as hard and fast as I could.\u00a0 My feet drove into mud as thick and clinging as wet cement.\u00a0 Instead of bouncing like a drumstick off a hard, sandy bottom, I was stuck up to my knees in black, viscous goo.<\/p>\n

Up above me, the sky was a tiny speck of lukewarm light in a wash of black, and I was running out of breath.\u00a0 I scrambled, trying to heave myself out with frantic pulls at the cold water until one of my feet came free.\u00a0 I kicked and lunged upward, sucking my other foot free, and then I began to swim upward toward the light.\u00a0 My lungs were exploding, so I began to exhale through my lips, hitching hard in my throat, knowing once my air was gone there\u2019d be nothing but water to gulp in unless I reached the surface, which was still impossibly far above me.<\/p>\n

\"\"My heart surged in pain.\u00a0 Nobody knew where I was to help me.\u00a0 I\u2019d made no announcement before I went under.\u00a0 The water was so dark that my cousins on the floating dock only twenty feet away had no idea where I was or that I needed them.\u00a0 Anxious and terrified, I swam for all I was worth, straining for my life, kicking and fighting toward the top, and when all my air had bubbled away into the black water, I clenched my throat closed to seal my oxygen-starved lungs, struggling not to inhale the lake.<\/p>\n

The surface was larger now, an uneven circle reflecting silvery, indifferent saucers of light, but I was still several feet below.\u00a0 I kicked and pulled one more desperate time and broke into the air.\u00a0 I gasped, finally, sucking in huge lungfuls of thin, clear air, and stared around me.<\/p>\n

My cousins were still sitting cross-legged on the floating dock, laughing, swatting at black flies.\u00a0 The aunts were back on shore in their lounge chairs.\u00a0 The sky, overhead, was an uneventful blue.\u00a0 My ears were rushing from inside, but outside my head, the surface of the water was peaceful and lightly rippled, calm and silent.\u00a0 Still terrified, I was also stunned with gratitude.<\/p>\n

I have not gone back down to the bottom of the lake.\u00a0 We just had our annual reunion there in northern Minnesota.\u00a0 I\u2019ve told my children and all my nieces and nephews of my story so they know not to do what I did.\u00a0 The water is as dark as ever.\u00a0 My teenage son told me he swam down there, but slowly.\u00a0 He said it\u2019s not too deep.\u00a0 He said I don\u2019t need to be afraid.\u00a0 But I still am.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The gutsiest thing I ever did at the lake nearly killed me.\u00a0 The color of our family\u2019s lake in Minnesota, where four generations of Geist-O\u2019Brien-Walshes have happily cavorted for as many decades, is a deep, rich brown.\u00a0 Rumor has it iron turns the water that color, while other theories lean toward peat, but whatever the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[256],"class_list":["post-1035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous","tag-childhood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1035"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1042,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035\/revisions\/1042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}