Eclectic, Alabama. Lake Martin. The sun rose over the distant tree line. The sky changed from pink sorbet to the same blue as my aunt’s ‘62 Eldorado, a car roughly the size of a Waffle House.
I heard a common loon. The birdsong bounced off the smooth water, and I was all smiles.
I haven’t heard a loon since I was a boy. It was such a lovely song that it was almost eerie. A lonesome sound. The sound of the lake. The sound of bygone memories. And most importantly, the sound of expensive lakefront real estate.
I’m getting closer to the age my father was when he died. And this feels weird because, in my heart, I’m still a puppy.
I’m not a boy, of course. Not even close. I don’t remember becoming middle-aged. But it happened. There are slight wisps of white in my beard. And when I wake up most mornings I feel like someone has beaten me with a length of rebar.
But deep inside, my childhood isn’t that far away. I
can still remember wearing clothes with my nametag sewn into the collar. I still remember damming creeks and building forts.
Swinging from rope swings. Jumping from branches. Riding bikes down impossible hills and trying seriously to give myself a subdural hematoma.
I remember each dog who slept at my footboard. I remember how my mother made Spaghetti-Os on a stovetop, long before microwave ovens ruined the world.
I remember Swanson TV dinners in tin trays, cooked in range ovens. The mashed potatoes were always partially frozen, and the apple cobbler was boiling magma.
I remember playing in the woods until sundown, listening to loons on the creek. I remember smelling like dirt and sweat and stale Kool-Aid.
We lived outdoors as children. We stayed in the woods until everyone’s mothers emerged from tiny, distant houses and shouted out their nightly songs.
You’d hear Mrs.…