Memories are tricky.
On Sunday I visited a place that existed mainly in my memory.
When I was a little girl, I remember going to the "beach" at Douthat with my Aunt Helen.
Well before I ever saw the ocean, I had this faux beach experience on the sandy shore of the swimming area at Douthat State Park near my hometown of Covington.
I remember the crowded beach. Towels and blankets and chairs and people covering every inch of sand.
From the water's edge I could see the wooden platform that looked like it was a mile away where teenagers - "the big kids" - were draped in conspiratorial conclaves. The boys would show off, diving close to the platform, splashing the girls who were trying in vain to keep their tresses dry.
In my memory Douthat loomed large.
It was a shock on Sunday when I left the restaurant along the lake where we had just enjoyed breakfast and walked over to take a look at the beach of my childhood.
Water in the small cove sparkled invitingly, and water rippled against the boat dock across the lake from the shore. The beach was a tenth of its size in my memory.
I asked Mom if it was the same. I mean, it's been 35-plus years since I built sandcastles there. There could have been erosion. There may have been a tsunami.
She immediately heard the disappointment in my voice and knew exactly what I was feeling. "You were so little when you came here. It must have seemed much bigger to you then."
Well, it did.
It's disturbing when memory and reality meet in the harsh daylight. I felt vaguely betrayed.
I wonder what else wouldn’t measure up in my 43-year-old eyes.
What about the beautiful white marble statues in Brookgreen Gardens near Litchfield, S.C.? Are they really miniatures?
The deep snows, what about those deep snows when I was in elementary school. So deep I could barely walk. So deep I was almost as scared as I was excited. Were they only ankle high?
Lost in thought, I watched a pair of teens on hydrobikes cycle their way across the glassy lake.
I’ve forgotten so many things. So many memories are cloudy, thin as a wedding veil. I think that’s why I was so disappointed to find the true Douthat, because the Douthat of my memory was one of the few truly clear ones.
Can you remember the first time you visited your elementary school as a teenager or adult? The halls that seemed so wide to you as a child suddenly are cramped and close. You had to bow at the waist to drink from a water fountain where you once had to stand on your tip-toes to reach the stream.
A noise behind me made me turn around and I watched my brother, Scott, and my niece, Gracilyn, come around the side of the restaurant.
“I want to go down there, Daddy,” Gracilyn said, her blond hair flying as she moved ahead on sturdy legs soon to be 4 years old. “I want to walk by the sea.”
“That’s a lake, Gracilyn,” my brother told his tyke, but the words hung on the humid air and were swallowed by the noise of late summer locust. She headed toward the stairs that would take her to the water’s edge. To the sea.
She walked past me, stepping on rocks and examining moss on the sides of trees as she made her way to the water.
I’m not going to tell her it’s just a lake.
She’ll find out soon enough.
