Sacred Garden 10/07

this is a rough draft of my 3rd assignment which was to write a descriptive account of an event from my childhood.  The final draft turned out rather well and elicited kudos from my instructor, which was cool.  I pared it down to just under 500 words so it changed a bit but not a lot.

The sky was grey that afternoon in Lakewood.  It was 1967. I was seven, and the sky seemed so close to the water that I felt if I stood up in the rowboat I’d hit my head.  The only sound was the water dripping off the oars as they slowly dipped in and out of the lake.

 

I have very few memories of spending time with my father when I was a young boy, but this is a vivid one.  The two of us took a rowboat out into the middle of the lake near our house. 

 

He and I sat in the middle of the lake enjoying the stillness.  I’d never been so far out before.  Looking down at the dark green murky water, I imagined what it might be like to suddenly see a giant head on a long neck slowly rising from the surface.  The Loch Ness Monster!  I told my dad what I was thinking and we laughed at how cool that would be.

 

Out in the middle of the lake we could see parts of the shore we’d never seen before, and something caught my eye.  It was as if someone put a giant window on the edge of the lake.  I could see something beyond the shoreline.

 

“What the heck is that,” I asked my father, pointing.

 

“Let’s go find out,” he replied and started rowing in that direction.

 

As we got closer I realized we were looking through a tunnel under a bridge on the shore that led to some kind of inner courtyard.  When we reached the tunnel we became very quiet.  We held our breath as we drifted beneath the bridge.

 

“Whoa,” we said together.

 

The scene on the other side of the bridge opened up to us.  What we saw took my breath away.  It was a beautiful red brick and white marble courtyard built around a long lagoon that led back under the bridge and out to the lake.  In the lagoon were tall green grasses that stretched high over the boat.  Large green heart-shaped lily pads floated on the surface of the pond, and lotus flowers of purple, white and yellow rose above the pads, untouched by the still, green water. 

 

There was something very strange floating near the boat and we rowed closer to get a better look.  It was big and round, the size of a beach ball, but it was covered with bumps.  Dad tapped it with one of the oars and it made a hard hollow sound.

 

“Maybe it’s some kind of huge egg,” I offered.

 

Dad didn’t reply.  He was looking in another direction and when I turned to see what was there, I saw a beautiful white marble statue of a woman in a long hooded cape with her arms outstretched and her hands open to the sky.

 

“It’s the Virgin Mary”, he said.  “I think we’d better go.  I don’t think we’re supposed to be here.”

 

Now I was afraid.  Any moment I expected alarms to ring and voices to shout and police to come and arrest us. 

 

Dad just turned the boat around and rowed calmly back out to the lake.

 

Our trip was over, but the colors, smells, sights, and the memory of sharing them all with my father, never ended for me.

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