Women on the Water

Micro-stories and people watching at the lake

The rock lumped behind her head, flesh piled in rounded river stones, water rippling at the pebbles of her toes. Once upon a time, they asked her if she would still go sunbathing with that belly. If not now, when? Many floods later, body piled by the boulders, grandchildren floating in the blue. The answer is still the right one.

Sweat rising, early sun, braids hang from helmets, they dive down the rutted road on studded wheels, spokes cracking. I hear their song and sing it inside me: Fear strikes us all, when it slaps you, don’t curl forward. Lean away from intuition. Risk yourself or you will fall.

The cotton of their beach dresses draping generations. They will take their baskets and picnics down to the lake. Lounging on the lawns, they seem to multiply, proliferate, inflate — these women and girls. Somehow, they only need to bite into the soft, dripping summer and toss the pit into the hillside. Then a babe ripens, it’s cheek blushes and grows fuzzy until, heavy, it drops from the tree and lands in a swath of cotton.

Feet wobbling with ripples, she asks one thing of her body — balance: the means to disappear from the crowds leaking into the water, pushing each other off rafts. Here an inlet, so alone that song rises. Ecstasy. She has found it. Until:

“Madame, madame! Excusez-moi!” The song is silenced, the summer dream broken.“Your paddle, it’s too short. It needs adjusting.” He is gliding closer. Full of this strange desire. To supervise. Instruct.

She slips further into the labyrinth of inlets, fingers of water reaching into the land. Nothing more than mirage. On the return trip, more careful, she watches.

Look closely, you’ll see them: flotillas of men paddling after women. Never quite swift enough to tell them how it’s done.

This is a collection of tiny stories I wrote while people-watching at the lake on a summer weekend. Part of the inspiration for this is the simple need to step out and be outdoors and see new things — and people so that I can come back and write.

Part of the inspiration comes from the book we are reading in the creative community I run. Breasts and Eggs by Meiko Kawakami. The novel — or pair of novels, made me think that Kawakami had a kind of collection of experiences in her mind that she pulled from real life, stories of women…And it made me want to begin collecting too.

It made me want to see common things with new eyes. This is the magic of reading. We learn something from every book.

How are you stepping outdoors these days? What new stories and images are you gathering? And what are you reading? I hope to cross paths with them here or elsewhere.

Thanks for sharing this story with me.

© Trisha Traughber 2021

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