A Lake Story

Chicago’s beaches are open today. It is all of 50 degrees, overcast and dreary, but if you are so inclined, you may flock to the beach today. I’ll pass thankyouverymuch. I don’t do beach even on the best of the best of beach weather days.

I do enjoy the lakefront though. I don’t spend nearly enough time walking/biking along the lakefront.

A favorite childhood memory involved the lakefront. My brothers and I often escaped to the downtown area, often separately, but sometimes together. We’d go to the movies and then just walk around, eventually making our way to the lakefront. When I got older, the lakefront was a favorite later night biking destination.

One of those together times I felt the need to dress up for some reason that escapes me now. I decide to raid mom’s closet for some chunky high heeled sandals. We were walking (me clomping) along the lakefront, pointing at and oohing and ahhing over the boats and buoys when all of a sudden, I listed to one side. One of the chunky heels had snapped, and bounced into the lake, bobbling along like those buoys we ahhhed over. Oh shit.

My older brother, true to his nature, plopped down on the ground and laughed his little ass off. My younger brother’s eyes stretched far and wide and before he could get the, “Mommy’s gonna kill you” out fully, I was down on my daisy covered (even back then mom persisted in floral prints) belly reaching for the heel.

Younger brother freaked. His anxiety over large bodies of water trumped mine by several aces. “STOP!!! BEFORE YOU FALL IN!!” he yelled. He grabbing at me, trying to pull me away. I clung to the edge, flat against the ground trying to explain that I couldn’t fall, off my belly, into the lake, (and *I* was taking no unnecessary chances—the heel certainly was within my reach-when if first fell, having gotten caught in something) but he would not be swayed. He was more and more insistent and since older brother was still laughing his little ass off, he was no help.

The heel bobbled out of my reach. Oh shit.

The train ride home was painfully long. Older brother teasing, younger brother clinging, relieved I hadn’t drowned, me scared shitless about what my mother would say, do. Half-way home, I decided I’d toss what was left of the chunky high-heeled sandals in the incinerator outside of our apartment door.

Mom wasn’t home when we steeped through the door so I didn’t have to explain why I was walking in the apartment barefooted. My brothers and I went on with the rest of the day as though nothing out of the ordinary occurred.

A couple of weeks later, mom was getting dressed to go out. She tore up her closet looking for her white, chunky high-heeled sandals. She cussed a storm, upset that she couldn’t find them. Neither brother said a word.

Of course, older brother lorded my secret over me. That is, until I caught him doing something *he* didn’t want told, which true to his nature wasn’t very long at all.

Have a happy, safe holiday weekend.