Back to the Water: A daughter's tale of truth, love and letting go

Introduction

In 2002, I worked with a karmic astrologer, who helped me discover my soul mission. During our first session, I stumbled into the name of this book.

How do you feel about water? she asked.

Oh, I’ve always had a deep connection to it, I swooned, as I tried to convey how deep the connection felt.

Do you live on the water now?

No, I said. I used to when I was young. I grew up with a cottage on the lake.

Well, she said. At some time in your life, I suggest you go back to the water.

She then told me that my soul mission was symbolized by a water sign in a water house (Cancer in the twelfth house for those who know astrology). In simpler terms, my soul task was to care for my hidden, emotional life.

As a pragmatic person, I found this alarming. In fact, the very last thing I wanted to do was delve into my unconscious life. Yet unfolding as if by magic, life has given me opportunities to do exactly that. And ever since, the phrase back to the water has both guided and haunted me.

Today, if family history is any indication, I’m more than half way through my life. Over the past few years, I’ve witnessed my parents’ health fail and in 2015, I became an adult orphan. In the silent aftermath of change, a new wave has bubbled up inside me, seeking to be seen.

This book has been difficult to write. Not only because it’s so intimate, but because I grew up believing that my dependable family with a cottage on the lake was pretty much perfect. In fact, even considering anything else felt tantamount to betrayal and disloyal to the highest degree.

This is my truth. I loved my parents. In many ways, they never let me down. I have felt their support and I’ve acutely felt our differences. I’ve stood on the ground of our family’s Christian-inspired traditions — and I’ve felt trapped by those traditions. I’ve made life choices that have taken me further away from them — and I’ve felt guilty about choosing myself. I’ve wanted to speak openly about all of this and more, but I’ve held back. Until now.

Back to the Water is a series of interconnected stories and true moments in my life that together, reveal my family’s emotional tapestry and my own. It’s about unhealed wounds and the nature of secrets. It’s about the cords tethering us to those we love — and the consequences of denying our true selves. It’s about what I lived, witnessed and learned in my parents’ last years of life. And — it’s about my own mid-life journey back to the water.

Many people have helped me along the way. I thank Sandra Bekhor who gave me carte blanche to write about our travels, a few months after my Mom died. I thank James Rowland, friend and web assistant, who’s been closer than anyone else to my creative ebbs and flows. I thank the early reviewers of this book, including Cynthia Barlow, Charmayne Kilcup, Anika Pilnei, Cindy Koury, and Barbara Densmore. I thank my family members who lived the same story from a different view and have come to their own conclusions, as valid as my own. I thank the teachers I’ve had along the way — especially those I didn’t know were teachers at the time.

Last but not least, I thank my Mom and Dad, Yvonne and Rick, who were supportive of my creative ventures, even if they didn’t fully understand them. In life, they were private people and for this reason, I have published this book after they have passed. I thank them for their love and support. For buying a cottage on the lake. Most of all, I thank them for gifting me the freedom early on to imagine. For without this foundation of innocent, fearless exploration, I may never have had the courage to return with new eyes to where I began.

This book is a creative, spiritual memoir. To protect privacy, I’ve changed some names and details. Though every conversation, dream and event actually took place, I have creatively ordered, expressed and combined conversations and insights to make the book easier to read and more engaging. Like the perspectives in this book, any factual mistakes are mine alone.

Karen M. Black

January, 2018

Water

A Mediator Between Worlds

A growing body of recent scientific evidence is now confirming traditional intuitive understandings of water’s role as mediator between the energetic and material worlds…‌Much evidence points to water’s ability to effectively memorize energy patterns with which it comes in contact and retain the energetic memory of vibrational frequencies for extended periods of time. — HeartMath

Chapter 1

The Cottage

If you think you don’t have any friends, buy a cottage on the lake. — A painted wooden sign at the cottage

The year I was born, a good friend of my parents was shot and killed by a stranger. His mistake was showing up early for work one morning, which put him on the same path of a man who had a grudge with his employer. Sadly, the man’s widow was forced to sell their cottage on Georgian Bay. My parents bought the cottage from their friend for $6,800. The same year Mom and Dad lost their friend and bought the cottage, they had their first child: me.

Growing up, the cottage was my world. As a young adult, it was my refuge from the real world. For five decades, our family spent summers there away from the pull of real life. But as my parents aged, things changed. In the last decade of their lives, the cottage became the focus of a fight that dragged them through muck: transforming me and my heart’s home, forever.

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As a child, my year began on the May long weekend with a fire on the beach, hand-held sparklers and a burning schoolhouse. It ended Labour Day weekend in September with a day of packing and a dinner of chicken balls with sticky red sauce and chop suey at a Canadian Chinese food restaurant. I barely remember my school year, except that I studied subjects I wasn’t interested in and played sports I didn’t enjoy. In between, I spent a great deal of time dreaming of summer and yearning to go back to the cottage again.

The cottage was a ten-minute drive from our house in town. Each summer, we lived at the cottage from July to the long weekend in September because Mom was a teacher and Dad worked on his own in construction. The cottage was nothing fancy: a rectangular clapboard building painted pale turquoise with two tiny bedrooms. When I was young, it had no shower or tub, no insulation, no laundry and no television. We never had air conditioning: if we were hot, we jumped in the lake.

The furniture at the cottage was decades old and often second or third-hand. The mattresses were hard and the sheets were faded. In the living room was a red brick fireplace licked black with smoke. Windows ran the width of the living room and flanked a narrow wooden door. From here, we could step out onto the deck facing the water.

Our beach was covered with smooth, flat fragments of slate-coloured shale. I loved the rocks! There were palm-sized flat rocks that skipped on the water when you threw them in a twirl. Black rocks that split into fossils and some that had natural holes in them. There were rocks that were more colourful when wet and stayed wet looking when you rubbed on Vaseline. We played with the rocks. Built with them. Collected them and wrote messages on them. My days were spent running barefoot on the rocks and by the end of summer, my feet were tanned on top, tough underneath and stained purple from sweet, black berries that fell from a mulberry tree.

For the first nineteen summers of my life, I went into a cold lake each time I needed to bathe, clutching a white bar of soap that would float. The great lake I grew up on was more like an ocean. Though the temperature rarely got higher than seventy-three degrees, the water looked tropical. From its depths on a sunny day, it beamed a glowing kaleidoscope of turquoise and cyan. Even when the water was frigid or so wavy I couldn’t see bottom, I never skipped a shampoo because of the weather.

Storms at the cottage could be wild. The wind rose quickly and gales lasted about three days, which was why we called them three-day blows. While a storm was raging, I gazed mesmerized out the window, entertained by the thrashing sky. Or I sprawled on the couch like a lump as the wind howled and devoured a book in a day.

When the rain was gentle, I put on my bathing suit and slid on the verandah in bare feet. Or balancing on my belly and a styrofoam flutter board, I rode the waves that always felt warmer than the air. On the calm mornings after a blow, we headed out like explorers to discover the curiosities that washed up on shore. Fishing lures. Clothing. Shells and driftwood. Crayfish skeletons. Bleached bones. Once, a worn wooden picnic table.

One summer, I camped on the rocks in a gold and brown tie-dyed teepee, made by my cottage-friend Caroline’s mom. We cooked eggs and bacon over a fire for breakfast. If I close my eyes, I can still smell the smoke and see how our fried eggs stuck to Mom’s black cast iron frying pan. I can still imagine the taste of the yolks stuck to the pan which broke, but were delicious anyway.

We played with whatever was around: there was no end to our imagination! Twigs were fire starters, bows and arrows and skewers for roasting marshmallows. Whiskey barrel corks were building blocks. A clearing by the road was a graveyard. Two sawhorses and a piece of plywood was a trading post. A clump of lilac was a longhouse.

My cottage-friend Caroline was from Toronto and in winter, we wrote letters planning our activities for the following summer. For a couple of years, we organized a Penny Fair, to which all of the neighbours were invited. We charged a few cents for small bags of dried mint tea. Three cents for a rope-swing ride and ant races through straws.

When I was five, Dad built a bunkie for guests, what we called The Cabin. When I was at university, Dad re-built the main cottage. After the renovation, we had a dishwasher, microwave, electric heat and a television. No washer and dryer though, because my parents figured it would be easy enough to do laundry in town. Over time, Dad made small changes to the cabin until we had a second bedroom there, connected by a bathroom. The cabin bathroom was so small you could hardly turn around. But that shower was so powerful it’d pin you to the wall!

Like other cottages in our area, our property line was loosely marked by rock-pile groynes, which extended about forty feet out into the lake. Rising up from the rock pile on the west side, was a massive slab of shale we named Slanty Rock. It was six feet long and four feet wide with a flat surface freckled with trilobites. We named it Slanty because it lay on top of other rocks, slanted at a perfect sunbathing angle.

When I was growing up, the people on our stretch of beach ran freely, visiting and playing on the rock piles on both sides. When the wind howled, we dove into the waves that broke over the rocks just for fun. At the crack of dawn, Caroline’s father was up fishing at the end of the rocks and her mom regularly swam to the tip of our rock pile and back. On warm afternoons, a neighbour’s daughter snorkeled over the rocks to catch crayfish.

Chapter 2

Living on the Water

At the cottage, we constantly had friends and family visiting. Guests often visited for weeks at a time and all were welcome to drop by. My friends were welcome, too. As kids, we swam from the raft Dad built during the day and slept in the cabin at night. In high school, I spent time there with my boyfriend, who quickly became a better windsurfer than me. As a young adult, I entertained a dozen people at a time, barbequing up a storm.

My Mom was the organizer at the cottage, planning meals and sleeping arrangements days in advance. Dad was the doer, helping Mom realize her plans. The meals my parents made at the cottage were generous and their parties, boisterous. We were big on barbequed meat. We also ate fresh local whitefish wrapped in wet newspaper and steamed; in early spring, fiddleheads; in June, asparagus and berries. In August, we ate juicy beefsteak tomatoes layered with cucumbers doused in white vinegar and fresh corn that we only bought if it was picked that morning. We made mulberry pies from the tree out back and at times, some very harsh wine. Dad also grew vegetables in an eccentric garden that he carved into our rocky, sunny beach.

My parents were married in the Baptist church in 1955 after dating for eight years and remained married for fifty-seven more. They never dated anyone else but each other. Throughout their lives, they were physically affectionate, laughed a lot, fought a lot, too, and always slept in the same bed. Mom was fiery, vocal and outgoing. Dad was the straight man with a dry, silly streak Mom called cute. As parents, they were inseparable, a well-oiled machine. They agreed on parenting, money, their home, their cottage and for the most part, politics. They managed their money and made all major decisions together.

Mom’s family was large, a mix of Scottish and Irish and she was the youngest. Dad’s family had British roots and he was the youngest of three. I had cousins all over: some we saw regularly and some I never met. We had family in town, some in other parts of the province and a couple who left Canada to build their lives in more exotic parts of the world.

Mom was raised by her parents Dolly and Amos who were strict, Victorian Baptists. Growing up, Mom was required to pray and attend church regularly and wasn’t allowed to drink, dance or play cards. By the time Mom had me, she had broken with the church, bristling and fuming whenever the topic of religion came up. Repeatedly, she told me that she’d never force religion on her children the way it had been forced on her.

I was raised with simple ideas. Work hard. Obey the law. Be polite. Show up on time. Do what you say you’re going to do. Finish what you start. Help out. Fix what you break. Pay back what you owe. Thank people. Clean up your own mess. My parents valued staying busy and getting things done. Get real was something I heard a lot. And Dream on.

I was taught I could do anything a boy could do. So I played with Malibu Barbie and I played with Hot Wheels. Mom taught me how to sew and cook and I also helped Dad with construction work. I was a tomboy and the fact I was a girl didn’t get me out of the dirtier chores. Once, I helped Dad blow particle insulation into the walls of our Victorian home. Another time, I threw wet gyprock into a green metal bin in the rain. Regularly, I mowed lawns, dusted and vacuumed and cleaned bathrooms. This was living in reality.

Despite Mom’s issues with the church, we celebrated Christian holidays. Instead of religious faith, my parents believed in common sense, hard work, intellect and science. You’d never catch them with a gossip or fashion magazine. But they read The Economist, Time, MacLean’s news magazine and mainstream newspapers from cover to cover. Twice a day, once before dinner and once before bed, they watched the local news on TV.

Mom and Dad were fierce armchair politicians. More left than right, they each had strong opinions about how things should be run. They believed that government and the law were there to protect people and to enforce justice. They had an unshakable belief about what was right and were quick to judge others they believed to be wrong. They were kind to neighbours and friends and helped many people. But they didn’t think in terms of community or cause.

When it came to getting something done efficiently, my family was at its best. If you wanted our help, we’d show up early, bring lunch, work hard and leave everything tidy. If we ran an errand for you, we’d be meticulous in giving you change. But communicating with one another on anything other than practical matters wasn’t as easy.

Our version of intimacy was sharing a secret about how we felt about someone else. Conversations often began: Don’t tell your father, but…‌ or Don’t tell your mother, but…‌ When I asked Mom or Dad how they were feeling, they’d often describe in great detail what they had for dinner.

Chapter 3

The Lighthouse in the Distance

We have to stop and be humble enough to understand that there is something called mystery. — Paulo Coelho

From our rocky beach at the cottage, there was a Lighthouse blinking on a distant shore. We called this small mass of land Lighthouse Island, though it’s official name was something else. During the day, the Lighthouse was a matchstick of white, rising up from a bed of trees. At night, its steady flash was a beacon and for me, a curiosity. As a child, I dreamt of visiting the Lighthouse. One year, with my father and sister, I did.

We traveled to the Lighthouse in an aluminum fishing boat named Frances, after the daughter of the boat’s previous owner. That day, my body was arched happily over the rumbling bow. I gazed deep into the glassy water as rocks moved smoothly underneath me. Gentle, rounded waves exploded with a chuck sound on the side of the boat, dampening my cheeks.

When the underwater rocks gathered in ledges like a staircase, I knew we were getting closer. My father slowed the six-horse motor to an uneven growl. I looked up and caught my breath. There was the Lighthouse! The silent beacon that had been on my horizon every day since I was born.

Karen, keep an eye out for rocks and get ready to put the oars in, Dad said. I turned my back on the island so I could reach down and grab two splintered, blond oars. One at a time, I held them up at an angle, sliding the columns of metal into each lock.

Okay I’m ready, I said.

Dad stood up and with a yank, tipped the motor up and on its side, so the blades were out of the water. I anchored my flip-flops to the bottom of the boat, bending my knees slightly to get some traction. Then I threw my body into rowing. When it was shallow enough, Dad got out and the boat popped up higher in the water. My younger sister and I tumbled out of the boat into the shin-deep water covering a solid ledge of shale. I was a bit disappointed to see a wooden dock on the island, for I had hoped that we’d be the first humans to visit here.

"You girls stand on that side. Ready: one, two, three…‌" Dad said and on three, we moved the red and silver boat to shore. My sister and I broke away, walking over the wooden dock toward thick, tangled brush. Dad followed. Seagulls and terns circled overhead, announcing our arrival.

Now be careful of the nests, Dad said. When I heard him, I slowed down. My sister forged ahead. My ears filled with the caw of birds, the buzzing of cicadas and the gurgle of waves. Carefully, I walked through the brush, which was wild and thick with nests. When I saw a nest, I cautiously peered inside and deliberately stepped around it. When I wasn’t sure where I was going I looked for the Lighthouse, the ninety-five foot structure that for almost a century had been warning sailors of the area’s dangerous, rocky shoals.

Alone on the island that day, we stomped around like pioneers. Beside the Lighthouse, I found an abandoned building with two windows sectioned into squares. The wooden door was locked with a rusty padlock. Curious, I steepled my hands over a murky window to look in. There was a small wooden chair, on its side. A stool. A basin. Dust. It was an empty room that had once been home to a lighthouse keeper, but had been looted repeatedly. A room that had probably been abandoned for longer than I’d been alive. But that day, none of this mattered to me. I was excited because I had found evidence of a past life!

Are you girls ready to head back? Dad asked, though it wasn’t a question. The wind was light now, but that could change at any time. We turned back to the rocky shore, where Frances sat waiting. I scanned the horizon and found our cottage, a turquoise dot in the distance. Before we left Lighthouse Island, I picked up a rock and put it in my pocket as a souvenir.

Chapter 4

The Water that Raised Me

Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it. — Lao Tzu

My parents raised me. But the big lake raised me too. Over the course of my life, I have immersed myself in the big water a thousand times or more. I’ve gone in slowly, as waves extended out from my body. Arms outstretched, I’ve dived shallow and dived deep. Underwater, I’ve opened my eyes. At night, I’ve floated, gazing up at the stars.

On her surface, I’ve motored in a fishing boat, planed on wooden water skis, sailed