Every once in a while, I think about a life without Lake Geneva. If I didn’t live here, and i didn’t know where here was, what would fill my time? Where would I go? What would my permanent scenery look like? In some strange modern twist on Frank Capra’s classic, what would happen if it wasn’t the me that never was, but if it was the town that I never knew? I have traveled some in my life, though not spectacularly so. I have seen mountains and beaches and prairies and streams. I have seen more than enough to know that what I currently see is what I like to see. I have seen enough to know where home is.
Yet as much as my home is where my heart truly is, where my home is had little, if anything, to do with me. Had my parents never realized the value of a lakeside residence, I would have never grown up here. To be sure, my here is not Walworth County. My here is not Elkhorn. My grocery store may be in Walworth, but my here most certainly is not. As I write this, prone on my couch, with a crackling fire behind me and a picture window lazily framing a snowy Sunday afternoon in front of me, my here has very little to do with the address where my morning paper is delivered. My immediate here tends to change, but where I feel most at home has been steady and constant, and unwavering.
I spent last week basking in the cruel intentioned sun of southern Mexico. Water, no matter if it’s salty and warm, or rushing and cold, always fits my eye. I have never, ever, purposefully taken a vacation that didn’t involve a waterfront location. My in-laws live in a land so desolate, so barren, that their town is named after a creek that went dry nearly a century ago. The last time I visited that Canadian wasteland was four years ago. I have no intention of ever going back. Perhaps if there was a lake, or a stream, or a drainage ditch filled with water, I might be otherwise convinced. My sun streaked vacation was fun, if tiresome, and I’m certain my monetary investment will reap dividends in the memories of my children, and in that, the trip was a success. I’d tell you that I cleared my mind, but I didn’t. I’m addicted to my phone in such a manner that most would find my habitual monitoring of the cellular device deserving of a clinical diagnosis bearing a scientific interpretation of my own name.
Even so, I walked on sand, swam in buoyant water, and tanned my voluptuous body. I dutifully gorged on poorly prepared buffets, and longed for a simple Starbucks coffee, or perhaps a scrap from a vended Cloverhill cinnamon roll. It was a fun vacation, but I missed the sights and sounds of home. For all the rustling of leaves and squawking of tropical birds that screamed at me from every resort tree top, and the crashing of violent waves and the loud chatter of heavy languages that I cannot stand nor understand, I find that the silence of a Lake Geneva winter to be even more preferable. After a week in another land, I didn’t truly get home until the morning after I returned. I was driving on South Lakeshore with the Fontana beach to my left, and the deep blue expanse of Geneva stretching towards the snowy tips of Conference, Cedar, and Black Points, when I once again found my here. This is the scenery that I see when I close my eyes, this is the scenery that I have unintentionally memorized and intentionally held up as my personal ideal. While the turquoise water of the Gulf of Mexico is beautiful, I assure you there is no hyperbole when I say it cannot hold a candle to the crisp, clear waters that surround my home.
I read a blog this morning written by a woman who lives in Seattle. I assume she loves her home. I assume the town fits here eye just as my town fits effortlessly into mine. I bet if I visited there, I’d like parts of that town. But that town is not my town, and while George Baily may have had a divine glimpse of his town without him in it, I have also had a glimpse of my life without my town in it. And just like George, I didn’t like what I saw.