Savor

This post is in response to a prompt from Kelly at *Weekly Anamnesis.*  I have not done this in a while, but I enjoy writing something that comes to mind from her word prompts. Today I am using this week’s word,  “Savor.”  Anyone is welcome to use her prompts.  Just go there and follow the instructions. I love to see what different people write about the same word prompt.

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One of the things I savor is good chocolate. This is a bit annoying to me because before I was pregnant with Chicklet, chocolate was not really my thing. Most of the time it still is not, but good chocolate candy is something to be savored. (Or inhaled.)

Another thing to savor is a perfect first kiss. It has been a very long time since I had a first kiss, but I believe the memory of a good one will last a lifetime. I have one such memory in my vault, and the memory seems almost like being there again. This is a good thing to savor.

But today I will talk about savoring the lake. I am a lake girl. This did not happen to me until I was in college because until then I never spent much time at the lake. But something inside of me always craved water. Although I have lived most of my life in very land-locked locations, the ocean has an unbelievable draw for me. I feel like I own it and it owns me. But the lake is a little different. I spent so little time at lakes as a child because my parents were poor, very poor. As my luck would have it, however, they gradually increased their wealth, then quickly increased it, so by the time I was in high school, they would have been considered rich by many. Let me tell you there is no better time than high school to have “rich” parents. This did not mean they showered me with material things (they did not), but they visited me a lot (I was in a boarding school) and took my friends and I out to eat when they did. Anywhere we wanted to go.

By college my parents had probably reached the peak of their wealth. (My dad is poor again, by the way. It is the way of owning one’s own business in an uncertain economy in an even more uncertain business market.) By this time their money had little affect on me other than that it helped foot the college bill. And they bought a boat.

The boat meant that we spent many weekends at the lake. It was a pontoon boat. Not glamorous, but in my estimation the perfect thing–floating dock to go park anywhere desired, then play from that. I never learned to water ski, but we did have many things we pulled behind that boat. I remember the first weekend at the lake, after school started, but when I was finished with college. HOW I savored the fact that I was on the water and not in a city six hours away getting an education!

When I was 30, I found myself single after being married. I lived next door to two very young, very hot police officers who took me under their wing.  That needs to be a post of its own, but they taught me more and gave me more inner strength through that time than anyone else ever could have. One of the things they did was get me back into the habit of going to the lake most weekends. They convinced me to borrow my dad’s pontoon boat and made me learn to drive it, and even it park it by myself in the very. narrow. slip. They had Sea Doos. They did not teach me to ride them, but to rip up the water with them. It was not long before my enthusiasm made my dad decide to purchase two Sea Doos of his own. My family went to the lake every three or four weeks, but I went nearly every weekend. My police officer friends made me pull the trailer with the Sea Doos and learn to efficiently back them into the water. I really hated that part because if I goofed at all, it took extra time, and people might be waiting, but they refused to do it for me.  (If those guys are not fathers already, they will make great ones someday! They remind me a lot of my dad, except they were a few years younger than me.)

Until this time in my life, I savored the lake, but I did not realize how much more there was to savor!  The three of us (and sometimes a cousin of mine and girls-of-the-week of theirs) would go to the lake early on  Sunday morning and not come back until dark. We had a specific  cove where we liked to park the pontoon boat, then we spent the day “tearing up the water” and just savoring life on the water. There was specific, savory food for these trips which included Wal Mart chicken (only good when spending a day on the lake, but ambrosia in that circumstance) and my homemade salsa. We played cards, read books, talked, napped, explored the lake and just looked at the beauty around us. Evening would  come. The lake would calm, and we would savor it all the more. Life is good on the lake… more than good. Sometimes we drove the boat/Sea Doos back across the lake in near-darkness and got home way too late, but it was worth every second.

My life-saving police officer boys moved away, and I lost all contact with them. Prince Charming (on the scene while they still lived near us) and I moved to New Mexico. There are not a lot of lakes here, but on Independence Day weekend, some friends took us to a wonderful lake three hours away. It was a time to be savored. There is just NOTHING like being on the lake.

So last week we were in Salt Lake City. I have been there many times due to my stamping conventions, but I had never seen the lake other than from the air when flying in. We went to Antelope Island in the lake to look around. I was prepared for an ugly, smelly lake. I was so wrong. It was indeed a bit smelly, but mostly just when we were on the causeway to the island. I have smelled worse things to be certain! But it was not ugly.

We hiked on a path that crested in a field of large boulders. (I will do at least one My World post on this.) My girls love to play in/on boulders.  I climbed the biggest one I could find. I did nothing more than savor the experience. The day was mostly cloudy, but warm. There was a breeze that was perfect. It was refreshing and blew the hair off my face, but did not whip it around into my face.  The shadows and the reflections were perfect. The water was an icy blue color. My husband asked if I needed to be in a lake to enjoy it. The answer was “no.” We never even made it to the beach. We sat and played on the boulders for an undetermined amount of time, and savored every second of the view. And now that I have been there? You bet I will go back the next time I am in town to stamp! Until then, I remember the gentle breeze and savor the memory.

click photo to enlarge