The Half Mile I Swam Beside Grandma

The Boathouse

I knew what I could do. I had guarded the city beach in Chetek for four summers in college, and I swam the 500 free for UW-Eau Claire for three years before my knees got opinions about flip turns. I know water, and I know what a tired swimmer looks like.

I walked up the shore path to the boathouse, the cedar one Grandpa put up himself in 1971. The air under its eaves still smelled like it did when I was little: gas, lake weeds and old life jackets.

The boathouse is where Grandpa’s things still lived, mostly because nobody could stand to move them. His tackle cupboard hung on the outside wall facing the lake, painted the same green as the rowboat, with a hook and eye latch that stuck.

I opened it because I was looking for the tow belt. What I found on the top shelf, behind a coffee can full of sinkers, was a small cardboard box with his square carpenter’s printing on the lid.

It said “Ingrid, spare,” and under that, “2002.”

Inside was a white rubber swim cap, folded flat and dusted with the cornstarch they used to pack them in. It had been sitting there for twenty-four years, waiting for the summer someone needed it.

I stood there in the sun beside the boathouse holding the box, and for a minute I could not do anything at all. Then I wiped my face on my shoulder and got to work.

I took down the tow belt, a nylon waist belt with a quick-release buckle that I had bought for open-water training in college. I took down fifteen feet of floating yellow line. Then I lifted the red kayak off its rack along the outside wall.

The kayak was mine. Grandma bought it for me when I made the lifeguard crew at nineteen. It is a sit-on-top, bright as a fire truck, and you can see it from anywhere on that lake. That was the point.