Maddie's Faded Summer Dreams

Lake Marie Maddie remembered summers in Chicago as being short and often oppressively hot, but luckily her family had a place to go to escape from the muggy city. It was a special, romantic place called Lake Marie. Maddie’s mother’s uncle Henry had purchased the property at Lake Marie as a summer home in the early 1930s. Uncle Henry had died before Maddie was born, and, in the fifties and sixties, when Maddie was growing up, his widow, Great Aunt Matilda, extended an open invitation to Maddie’s family and Maddie’s mother’s sister Aunt Ruth and her family to spend their summers at the lake. The two-hour drive to Wisconsin seemed endless, and Maddie and her mother had a running contest to see who would be the first to spot the brown wooden gate announcing the entrance to the lake. “There it is!” her mother would shout, pointing excitedly to a tiny brown speck that disappeared and reappeared as the car rolled down one hill and started to climb the next, the gravel road crackling under the spinning tires. Passing under the entrance with its weathered sign warning trespassers to keep out, Maddie felt as if she had entered another world, and the city seemed a million miles away. Maddie used summers for reflections on her life. Time has a different meaning in an unfamiliar setting, and returning home can make all the time spent in another place seem like a dream. At Lake Marie, Maddie’s world seemed to have shrunk, and life seemed to lose its dramatic intensity. It had been a difficult year. Maddie’s parents had separated in January, and their divorce was final in June, right before their annual summer trip to Lake Marie. It would be the first summer with just Maddie and her mother alone at the lake without Maddie’s father Patrick and younger brother Peter. Her father had custody of Peter during the summer. Peter had been deaf since birth. Maddie remembered her mother would come by his crib while he was sleeping and clap her hands and shake a rattle, but it was no use; there was no response. Maddie was still trying to make sense of the divorce. Maddie had always thought that her parents had a happy marriage, and her sheltered world was shattered when she learned her father was having an affair. She was hurt and confused by her father’s insensitivity and weakness of character. He had always been so kind and thoughtful to Maddie and Peter. One of Maddie’s fondest memories of father-daughter bonding was when her father took her to the Kungsholm Restaurant in Chicago to celebrate her twelfth birthday last September. The restaurant was housed in the old McCormick mansion; above the entrance was a model of a Viking ship. After a delicious buffet lunch, they watched a marionette production of the operetta HMS Pinafore in a miniature opera theater. Maddie realized that her mother Mary had suffered greatly over the past year and wanted to be a comfort to her. Her mother was always making her leave the room saying “Run along, your daddy and I have something to discuss.” Children are terrified of adult tears, at least Maddie was, and she never forgot her mother crying as she tore up old Valentine cards her father had given her. Maddie thought she would never be completely happy again, but her mother assured her that: “Good times, bad times, all times pass,” and “Sorrow can carve out the vessel that will later hold joy.” Maddie missed her father and brother terribly. Peter was Maddie’s best friend. Peter once confided to her: “I wonder what a fine engine sounds like. Sometimes I play a game and pretend if I could only hear for one day or even one hour what I would most like to hear. At Christmas, I want to hear my mother’s voice singing Christmas carols and playing the piano. But right now I’d give anything to hear the song of that little bird up in the tree with its chest all puffed out. It must be the most beautiful sound in the world.” “Big deal, so you’re deaf. Beethoven was deaf too,” Maddie tried to cheer him up. Maddie had bought Peter a picture book about birds, and he told Maddie he would memorize the names of each bird to impress Maddie when they saw each other again.