Memories of Lake Wabaskang
by
Paul R. Meredith
The surface of the water appeared to be a huge mirror
reflecting the blue sky and the white puffy clouds hanging above it. Never in
all the twelve years she had come here from her home in Illinois for two weeks
of each year had Stacy seen the lake so still and so absolutely beautiful. The
sounds of the loons on the morning lake seemed to be calling her to come to the
water’s edge. They called to her the same way in the quiet evenings as well.
Many evenings she would sit on the cabin steps or on a large rock at the edge
of the lake to listen to their calming calls. The calls of the loons were
mysteriously beautiful and seemed to have a quieting effect on her she didn’t
quite understand. She could sit and listen to them for a long time without ever
moving. As she gazed across the big lake, Stacy thought paradise must be like
this.
Stacy’s husband Dave taught her to
love this place from the first year they were married. It had been his dream to
own a cabin in Canada,
preferably on one of the large lakes in Ontario,
and be able to come anytime he had the chance. The year before he and Stacy
married, he saw the chance and bought the cabin from a wealthy attorney who was
ill and retiring from practice in Davenport,
Iowa. The cabin was located on Lake Wabaskang
in southern Ontario.
It was north of Kenora up on Red
Lake Road. Dave had worked in the old attorney’s
office for a short time after he passed the Illinois Bar. That’s where he met
Stacy. She was clerking for the same attorney and his partner while she was
still in law school. It was almost
love at first sight for him, but not exactly
the same for Stacy.
Dave fell hard for her and asked
her out after knowing her slightly over two weeks, but she flatly turned him
down. “Thanks, but I want to get my career started before I get all bogged down
with personal things that could interfere with it,” she told him. But Dave was
a persistent cuss and made it his goal to talk her into accepting a date from
him. It took three months of talking, but she finally relented one evening
after work and told him, “Yes, I will agree to a date with you, but the date
will have to be for dinner.”
Dave jumped on the offer.
“Terrific, yes, I absolutely agree to that.”
“At my parents’ home,” she added.
“Whoa, I don’t think I’m quite
ready for that yet. We haven’t even gone out together. I just want to get to
know you better, not meet your parents.”
“That’s my offer, so are you not
taking it?”
“Why not just the two of us going
to dinner first? If that goes well, which I think it will, we could do the
thing with the folks later. I am not asking you to marry me, at least not just
yet.”
Stacy turned and walked away.
“Hey, wait, what about an answer
for me?” Dave insisted.
“I gave you the answer in the terms
I offered. Apparently you didn’t like them.”
“But what if your parents don’t
like me?” Dave asked.
“I guess that would mean we
wouldn’t be having any future dates, so I would say that if you think you might
ever want to see me again, you had better be on your best behavior when you
meet them at dinner,” Stacy matter-of-factly said. “And as far as that stupid
comment you made about not asking me to marry you, please, give me a break. As
far as I know right now, you might be the world’s biggest jerk. I guess time
will tell.”
Her rejoinder caught Dave by
surprise. He hadn’t realized she was quite so spunky. “But why? Just give me
one good reason why we have to have dinner with them.”
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