Three sisters summered in the woods on New Moon Lake. One was my mother, Gloria. Our cottage stood on a non-waterfront lot across the road from her younger sister, Daphne. Down the road and deeper in the cove lived the third sister, Lillian, the ping pong connoisseur. My cousin David was Daphne’s youngest of three sons. Her husband, my Uncle Charley, worked all day long from the cardinal song of dawn to that batty time of lingering dusk, despite the fact this was his weekend getaway. But he had survived the terrors of Bataan and work was welcome therapy.
He had built the cottage from scratch, using massive unfinished pine logs centered around an immense central fireplace created from enormous field stones. He had also landscaped all the grounds, including a grassy promontory, supported by lofty stone foundations, resting beneath the shade of eastern pine trees overlooking the lake, his dock, the rowboat he had built, and a raft he had also built complete with platform diving board. That’s where the three cousins played today.
Paula was sitting on the side of the raft, her legs kicking up a splash of waves in the revitalizing water. She was Lillian’s daughter. In the more mundane seasons of autumn, winter, and spring, her family lived in the apartment above that of David’s family, in a house both families owned. Our grandmother lived on the third floor, and by then, my family lived less than a quarter-mile down the road on the same street, Oak.
David was on the diving board. Actually he was on the railings of the platform that held the diving board, maybe ten feet above the deep blue water. I was treading water underneath the diving board, studying carefully the process David had perfected, which involved climbing carefully to one railing, then steadying both legs on both railings before lifting one foot off while pushing off with the other sideways, simultaneously raising both hands and clasping them together in a prayer-like salutation to the lowering late afternoon sun and then diving into the empty space of the world, before disappearing into its sparkling reflections.
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