On Lakes and Love

There were a lot of Shire kids, all boys except one. I was just a kid myself when we went to visit their lake cabin and it was hard to keep track of all of them. When I think of it now, I picture the small central room of the cabin awash with the colors of t-shirts and broad shoulders rushing through. There was a busyness to lake life and these boys put their heart and soul in it. 

The only time you could get a clean number on them was when we would all sit around the oblong table at night to play Spoons. Spoons is a kind of musical chairs with cards and spoons instead of chairs. There’s one less spoon than people and when you get a run or 4 of a kind, you grab a spoon. Many of the Shire boys were quite a bit older than we were, my sister and I, and they were big for their ages, football players, I think. My sister and I learned to slide those spoons very quietly from the center of the table onto our laps. We learned how to watch the cards with one eye and watch the spoons with the other. I’ve never lost a game of spoons 

One night, there was a huge storm coming through and instead of waiting it out playing cards, my dad and Mr. Shire decided to take us right out into the lake. The air was hot and humid, like the clouds were hanging low to the ground. We wore our bathingsuits outside in the middle of the night and we walked down to the beach in bare feet. I couldn’t see the sand but I could feel my feet sink down through it, soft and unreliable, giving way underneath my 60, maybe 70 lb frame.

As we got closer to the water, I felt the sand firm up and felt my dad take my hand. Mr. Shire took my other hand and the boys were on the ends, holding on to my sister, I hoped. The water wasn’t cold, or at least that’s not how I remember it. What I remember was the feeling of being raised up, like a bird taking flight, like a nut in a slingshot shooting free. I remember the feeling of my feet, weightless, beneath me and the darkness of the sky above. I remember how strange it was that the water, frightening and scattered, was powerless to hurt me. We had the strength to overcome it but none of that strength was my own.

I didn’t know it at the time but there was a reason the Shire’s had so many kids. They were a certain kind of Christian and having kids was one of the things they were supposed to do. Good thing Mrs. Shire was built for it because in the end, they had 7 kids, 6 of them sons of rather large stature. I learned a lot more about their religion when I was in college and my dad invited me to go to one of the son’s weddings down South. There was speaking in tongues at the service, prophecies for the wedded pair, and they had a special priest who they invited down from Massachusetts to give the homily. 

This priest was something of a hero because there was a political war being waged in Massachusetts at that time, a war over gay marriage. Before he revealed who he was, he gave one of the most beautiful homily’s I’d ever heard at a wedding. It was a phenomenology of romantic love. At the time, I didn’t know that I was gay. I’d never had the chance to kiss a girl but I did suspect I might someday like to. As I listened to this phenomenology of love, I began to suspect that maybe I already knew the girl with whom I might like to give it a try. 

Everything this priest said described how I felt when I was with her. I’d never even thought of her that way but suddenly it seemed as obvious as my hand on the pew. I started to feel like she was right there there, like I could reach out and hold her hand. Almost in a trance, I felt my heart opening and flooding with love and realization. I closed my eyes and imagined her sitting with me, leaning against me, just near me. It was at this moment that the priest chose to describe his political struggles up in Massachusetts, where the gays were destroying the world. It felt like someone snapped a large rubberband directly across my naked heart. I stood up and walked out of the church, not sure if I was leaving in protest or just because I didn’t want anyone to see me cry. It was an automatic response, a gasping for air.

I went into the foyer and sat down on a cushioned bench. I let myself feel everything that I was feeling and watched as my mind raced around looking for something to do with it all but found nothing. I looked down at the patterned carpeting that extended out to the door of the church. I knew I wasn’t going to leave, so instead I stood up, turned around, and walked back into the church. I don’t know if anyone even noticed that I’d gone, although my dad did asked me if I was okay. I said I was fine and we could talk about it later. 

At the reception, I sat at a table with my dad and three married couples. Each of them had exactly 11 children, which suddenly struck me as terrifying. I ran into some of the Shire children there too. One had become a missionary, another other was about to run for office, and Megan, the only girl, had no children and seemed eager to leave. I made it through the reception with ease but, then again, I was trained at an early age to keep one eye on the cards and one eye on the spoons. Since I left home at 18, I’ve never lost at a game of Spoons.

It took me many years to finally understand and speak about the love I felt for that girl. By then, she was planning a wedding of her own. The hatred I heard during the homily, on the other hand, is something I encounter all the time and it never feels any gentler than it did on that day. I never see it coming and it always makes me cry. The only difference is that nowadays, when I feel that way, I don’t gasp for air, I don’t walk away, and I don’t watch my cards. I have learned to stand right where I am, keep my eyes fixed directly into the storm, and allow myself be lifted, weightless, over scattered waves by a strength that is not my own, to let my heart be softened like sand giving way underfoot, and to thank god I know that a lake can feel like an ocean.