Summer begins but the lakes are cold

This comic brings back memories. For several years, our family lived in Port Huron, Michigan. In fact, two of our daughters were actually born up there, and all three were baptized on Easter in 1986. For those of you who do not know, Port Huron is in the thumb area of Michigan. That means that it sticks up into Canada. In fact, Windsor, Ontario, is actually south of Port Huron, and Toronto is East Northeast of that city.

Every winter it would definitely get cold, and I think that every winter we were up there, the St. Clair River froze sometime during the winter. It would freeze hard enough that pickup trucks could simply drive across the river from the USA to Canada. Needless to say, this did not exactly make the USA Border Patrol happy, but what could one do? I can remember when spring approached waiting for the breaking of the ice. Just about every year, both USA and Canadian icebreakers would come through at that time to make sure that the ice pack broke up evenly and did not cause damage. Nevertheless, at least two of the years, the ice floes did cause damage, one year even wiping out a chunk of the promenade that ran by the river.

But, then Memorial Day would roll around. And, as we know, after going to the parade honoring the veterans, it was very easy to go to the pebbly beach, either on the Port Huron side or the Sarnia, Canada side of the river to take a dip. There was only one problem. As I am writing this, Buoy 45149 in southern Lake Huron is reporting a temperature of 37º F. In Cleveland, which is southeast by over 100 miles as the crow flies, Buoy 45005 is reporting a balmy 59º F. Well, I suppose that it is balmy in comparison to southern Lake Huron.

But, you can imagine the shock to your system to dip yourself in water of that temperature. Amazingly enough, our daughters, who had grown up in that environment, would go in to play and come out when they got cold and had turned a nice light blue. They would warm up and then go dashing back in. I would get in up to my knees, and then, and then, I would dash out. I think that eventually I would always dip myself, but never with the enthusiasm of our daughters. I have always liked my water closer to my body temperature than between 37 and 59 degrees.

This comic also brings back memories of a good time in community with families whose last names were Thomas, Sloup, Drake, Comer, Brown, Springer, Kirkpatrick, etc., etc. Life seems simpler when I look back when, although I know that it wasn’t. But that time in our lives has acquired a fine patina of memory, a golden haze which obscures the negatives and lets only the golden glow of the positive remain. It was from that community that our family was sent out to mission work. Even now, I have kept up through Twitter with the birth of twins to one of the girls who played with our oldest daughter. She is no longer a girl. She is now a mother in her own right, helping to build those same golden memories that I fervently pray her children will have when they look back to their time as youth.

Not all of us are fortunate to have golden memories. And not all of my life is a golden memory. But, I treasure those times that live on as perhaps a small foretaste of what it might be when Our Lord returns and invites us to the Marriage Feast of the Lamb, when the New Jerusalem comes down out of heaven, and when every tear, every sorrow, and every bit of suffering through which we have passed is finally healed, wiped away, and become only a non-threatening memory.

On this Memorial Day, let us remember those who fought, those who died, those who were wounded, those who still serve, those who endured much so that we might have memories of warm summer days and frosty cold lakes.