“Time, mystical time, cutting me open, then healing me fine.”
~Taylor Swift, invisible string
In 1998, I used my first email account (the now defunct DandEsmith@aol.com) to cajole my ten best college friends to meet me in Atlanta for the Lilith Fair. I printed out driving directions, bought some disposable cameras, drove to the old Disc Jockey in Lexington to purchase tickets. For reasoning now lost to time, we called it The Summer of Fun Club (SOFC). It was magic.
There has been a SOFC every summer since. There used to be ten people in our motley travel troupe, but time, circumstance, and differing world views has whittled it to The Quarters (Erin, Alli, G, and Gwen; we reckon it’s better to have four quarters than 10 dimes anyway).
Together, we’ve weathered it all: marriages, divorces, pregnancies, parenting, changing careers, aging parents, and house renovations. We’ve brooked money problems and various injuries and those seasons when we hate our spouses and the other seasons when we hate our kids. We know where the bodies are buried and will take those secrets to our grave because what happens at SOFC stays at SOFC. We have several decades of photo books documenting questionable fashion choices, bad haircuts, and genuine smiles. There have been planes, trains, and automobiles, not to mention the Mega Bus we rode all the way to Chicago. We’ve shut down Broadway in Nashville, eaten oysters in Charleston, ordered bougie cocktails in Rosemary Beach.
But the truest Summer of Fun Club is at the Lake Herrington cabin, owned by Gwen’s parents. That cabin is the SOFC north star, the place we return year after year. Where, for over twenty years, The Best of Salt-N-Pepa has been in the boombox (Girls, what’s my weakness? Men!). Where one knows you don’t go to Kennedy’s or Sunset for boat fuel. Gwen will always stop on the way for fresh peaches, G will be late, Alli will talk in her sleep, and I’ll forget to bring a dock chair but always remember to pack a portable speaker.
Lake Herrington tastes like prosecco and beer cheese, smells pleasantly musty and fishy, sounds like wake lapping against the dock, feels like bare feet burned by the wood but soon soothed by the chilled water. It looks like Golden Hour, our closest star sinking in the water, the water glitter burning our eyes and reminding us that, like that longest of days, summer isn’t infinite. Lake moments are spun gold, gossamer filaments that shine brightly but quickly blow away. They serve as a reminder to savor each moment we have together.
The tans may fade, but the memories last forever.
This marks the beginning of my writing sabbatical. I shall return at the end of the summer, hopefully full of new tales to spin. Thank you for reading!
