THE RAFT THAT NEVER MOVED

As Huckleberry Finn could explain, rafts were meant to travel. Say the Mississippi. But my raft never moved. Instead of being a way to go places, it was the place to go...!

This all happened a long lifetime ago in a weedy little pond called Lily Lake. It's still there just south of the town of O'Henry, Illinois. During the Great Depression, our extended family shared a tiny lakeside cottage there every August. And while the lake had far more weeds than lilies, the most teachable thing it had was this little wooden raft about 200 yards out. It became and has remained the heaven of my youth.

The assertion calls for some explanation. If not for you, at least for me these 70 years later.

Getting up on those green, summer mornings was to rise into a land of white mist. It silently cloaked the knobby hill poking its way down from the cottage to the little dock. The wooden dock was about as old as the wooden cottage, making them both some turn-of-the-century leftovers from whatever family once found refuge out here. However, the dock was not the object of my affection. It was only the jump-off point from which my agile older cousins would dive.

Day after day, scrawny me watched invincible them swim out to the raft where they spent the morning lounging, sunning, laughing, and occasionally jumping into the cool waters. Can you see why I called it the heaven of my youth...? It was that faraway place that promised a paradise of pleasures once you got there.

But those 200 yards -- so far and so hard. I learned early how heaven can be as difficult as it is desirable. Ever since, life has continued to feature little floating heavens often just out of reach. You can see them, you can plan for them, but it's the dive that counts. Taking the plunge and surviving the swim. Watching my older cousins do that morning after morning was such inspiration. And yet such intimidation. I simply didn't think I could make it.

This month -- 70 Augusts later -- I remembered my way back to the family's long ago cottage retreat. Ever since the War broke out in 1941, there would be no more summers here. But surely I would find much the same about the place. Memories are so good about that. However -- this one proved false. The cottage was gone, the dock was no longer there, and the raft had long ago disappeared.

When we re-visit our youth this way we find a rummage-sale of second-hand remembrances. Some sweet, some sour, but all indispensable to what we have become. And so -- like you? -- I can't and I musn't forget that raft. That metaphor for every dream you've ever had. And even though you may never have reached it in your youth, surely you have several times since.

Not every dive was strong enough to reach there. But the ones that were, were worth the risk. And no matter how many years later, it's still true for all the dives we still have left.