Near the house where I grew up in Falls Church, Virginia, is a lake. It’s manmade, but more natural than anything else I’ve seen. It’s hidden in such a way that nobody is aware of its presence until they’re suddenly standing right next to it, silenced by disbelief. Disbelief. Not awe, not wonder, but disbelief. The beauty of the scene in which it resides is truly unbelievable.
But even though it’s an unbelievable beauty, it’s an understandable beauty. It can’t be understood in words, but when you stand by the water’s edge, you understand everything. You understand everything about whatever makes life so beautiful.
But the lake, along with this feeling, is hidden in a way that most people don’t ever find it. You have to earn this body of water’s presence in your life. You have to really be searching for it. Even if totally unaware of the fact that you are, in that moment, searching for something, you have to really be searching for it. Because if you do find it, as anyone seeking it inevitably does, you suddenly just know. You know you’ve found exactly what you’ve been looking for all your life.
When night falls, the water’s surface fills up with reflections of the stars and melts into the sky. It’s an image that taught me what perfection really means. It means a loss of words. It means a desperate, pointless effort to find the right words. But there are no words. Not in this case.
I first encountered the lake when I was fifteen years old. I’d grown up living right next to it and didn’t even know it existed until then. I don’t mind though. I probably wouldn’t have appreciated it as much if I’d found it earlier. It was the right moment for it when I took my first footsteps onto the surrounding path.
The moon was out and the night stood still as I sat near the water’s edge. I wasn’t alone. The boy who’d brought me there was my best friend and first love. I’d met him four years ago, but being fifteen, it felt like we’d always known each other. For now, the night stood still. We felt our entire lives become that single moment of frozen time. He took my hand and as we fled the earth’s rotation, we really had known each other forever.
He quietly led me to a place with a perfect view of the water, a spot practically invisible to anyone walking along the path. I could tell he’d brought me to a place that meant a lot to him, but still had no idea how he’d first found it. Looking back, I know he’d probably been searching for it without ever realizing. He arrived at knowing as he arrived at the spot where we sat now.
We sat in silence for an hour, maybe more, maybe less. It was a comforting kind of silence that allowed us to find each other, both lost in thought. I remember he spoke only once. The sound of his voice created ripples in the silence that I could almost see traveling across the surface of the lake. Maybe it was a trick of the starlight, maybe not. Even so, he said to me:
“There’s only one person besides you who’s sat here and seen exactly what you‘re looking at right now.”
“Who?” I asked, though I already knew. It didn’t matter that I predicted his answer before he gave it. Something in the ground shifted when he said, without removing his gaze from the water, “Just me.”
I didn’t return to the lake for a long time, not until the summer after my senior year in high school. I’d almost forgotten about its existence up until then. Actually, I can’t use the word forgotten to describe the unforgettable. The memory of it was still there, but as life had picked up and I got caught in the whirlwind of life, among other things. I pushed the lake to the back of my mind where it waited patiently.
One summer night shortly after my high school graduation, I went for a run and found myself taking a different route than usual. My feet decided for me. I knew without knowing where I was headed, yet wasn’t completely sure I could find my way back there. But my heart knew the way. It arrived at the water’s edge long before I my feet could bring me there, so I ran as fast as I could so we could reunite. It called my name, impatient for me to witness what it had uncovered from the back of my mind.
Before I knew it, I was there. I was back. Though I’ll probably never risk it, I think I could find that lake with my eyes closed. I did, in a way, that night. And with the lake in front of me, my eyes opened again at I felt a memory brush up against my arm. They had been shut for some time. If anything can cure blindness, it will be the lake. It’s too much of a miracle for any pair of eyes to resist being lost in its depths, even if just for a little while. It’s something that lives in your vision long after you’ve stopped looking, not that It’s easy to stop. But part of finding beauty is learning how to turn away.
After spending the final two years of high school groping around in the dark, my sight returned that summer. I started going back every day, sometimes alone, sometimes bringing my closest friends, because it was something they needed to see. Sometimes I went with the same boy as before. Though we were no longer in love, we both saw the moment we’d first sat there together reflected in the water’s surface. We both saw our childhood reflected in the lake, shining right next to the stars.
The future lay just beneath the surface, obscured by the vibrancy of the past as it often is, but we felt its presence nonetheless. Many days that Summer I sat next to the lake and for hours tried to soak up as much of what it had to offer as my mind and body could take in. I knew that in a couple months I’d be gone at college and my childhood would no longer be a place I could visit all the time. Knowing this, I held onto the lake, forging new memories with my friends, basking in the ones I already held on to.
A couple of weeks ago I went home to Falls Church, just for a weekend. I caught myself unawares while driving back to my house on Friday night, making a spontaneous turn instead of returning on time for curfew. But time ceased to exist as soon as I found myself staring at the lake. I breathed in the surrounding trees for the first time in months.
It felt like I was watching a film reel of every precious memory of summer, of the first time I stood there, of being young. For the first time in months I was immersed in a part of myself, maybe one of the most important parts, a part of me I’ll never be able to physically take with me to school. I was immersed in my innocence once again and it made me completely and utterly aware of the fact that I’m alive.
In a few days I returned to school, leaving my memories of innocence at the lake’s shore once again. It wasn’t a sad goodbye or very difficult at all. I knew, as it faded from my sight in the rearview mirror that it would stay there forever, always welcoming my return.
Some days I think that if I close my eyes and run as fast as I can, even while I’m far from home, I’ll open my eyes and find myself there once again. Maybe I can, just because of that one piece of my soul that’s made the lakeside its home.
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