Domestic Diversions

It was a warm, sunny evening.  I felt safely enveloped by the cozy surroundings of Empire along the Lake Michigan shoreline.  Escaping to the Leelanau Peninsula; a pilgrimage my wife Stephanie and I take often, since honeymooning there some 19 years ago.  As we walked to the lake, we noticed a group of young people hanging out on a bluff, talking, drinking, and listening to music.  Their carefree ways seemed innocently celebratory and engaging as the orange sun began falling into the blue waters of Lake Michigan. 

We marveled at the sight of the big lake, while also noticing the quaintness of the smaller inland lake behind us.  The pond-like lake had some docks jutting out, but mostly its perimeter was rugged allowing cattails to grow uninhibited for dragonflies to rest on their velvety tops.  I couldn’t help noticing the abrupt and arrhythmic movement of the cattails across the small lake.  As I peered toward this movement, I noticed what seemed to be a young man thrashing back and forth on the rugged shore of the lake.  He appeared to be barely in the water, sitting, sometimes quietly, and at other times abruptly rocking and yelling. 

I pondered with mixed emotions whether this man was in distress.  I mused, I hypothesized, and I feared the worst.  Was he a cast away from the party on the bluff, perhaps ingesting some substance that was making his brain squirm like a toad?  Or was he a lost autistic child who happened to wander off the back deck of a nearby house while his parents laughed and ate with friends?  I couldn’t shake off the notion that this person needed help. 

Why me, why do I have to help?  I began walking around along the edge of the lake until I came upon him yet still at a distance.  This distance between us was created by the expanse of cattails, but mostly from the depth of my fear.  Who is this person, what’s wrong with him, what does he need, can I help?  I yelled to him, “Hey, are you alright?”  He stopped rocking and shouting, to lucidly say, “Yeah, I’m fine”.  I then turned away from him to walk back to the familiar and safe surroundings of my wife and the setting sun.  Nonetheless, I couldn’t let go of the pulsating and intrusive image of the young man in the cattails. 

I tried again to help, this time summoning another man who just finished pushing his young daughter on the swings.  He also was alarmed.  He too wanted to help.  As he approached the rugged edge of the lake, he amazingly began marching through the cattails until he stood over this mysterious young man.  My wife and I watched as they conversed, eventually both walking out together.  The walking, talking and cooperative young man waited by the park entrance while the purposeful rescuing man briskly came over by us.  He related that he needed to get his family vehicle to take the distressed and hurting 16 year old boy to his parent’s house on the other side of the village.  I asked him, “What’s going on with him?”  He urgently shared with concern that the boy had been fishing until he painfully hooked the flesh of his hand with a Rapala fishing lure.  The yelling and thrashing was him unsuccessfully attempting to extricate a barbed treble hook out of his hand so he didn’t have to face his own embarrassment nor burden his parents with such a task. 

As they drove away, I faced my own shame for not helping more.  I also realized in that poignant moment that relationships require involvement, vulnerability and risk, particularly when we are stepping into the unknown and unfamiliar and away from the safe and rehearsed.  To help, sometimes requires us to walk into the marshy and muddy layers of relationships.