Off in the Distance

Not far from our house is a small reservoir.  It is called a “lake”, but I’d wager it’s a man made place where water is allowed to gather.  It’s spring and people sit along side fishing for carp, which someone must stock here.  The Chinese version does not appear to have a fishing reel.  Rather just a long straight sick, with a line and a bobber straight off the end.  I’ve never seen anyone catch anything but on a sunny day like this you can find the fishermen every twenty yards or so, with their pole resting on the ground, relaxed, and “fishing.”

It’s a day with a blizzard of cottonwood poplar puffs blowing about in the wind.  As noted the day before, it would be beautiful, a veritable cotton blizzard, except for the fact that they are all dirty and forever gathering, on the road, in the dust, on the lake.  If you look off in the distance these air puffs obscure all clarity and compromise ones gaze to merely a kilometer or two, through the down particulate.

This particular lake we are driving to, is known as ‘Roman Lake.’  Perhaps there is a good reason why but I think it is probably just a recent affectation.  Turning off from the main road to a small thin dusty road.  To the right is the pond and to the left one is quickly met by a string of lake front restaurants.  We’ve come here at night more than once, and labored to find a place we like.  After a long, slow progression, past the strip, stopping at points where cars cannot pass, we finally make it out and turn back up the other side where there are no restaurants and more of a chance to park. 

For some reason we have wound up at the Malaysian place we’ve visited before.  “Malaca something or other” There are places available on the roof.  Every table has someone smoking.  The food isn’t bad and the view over the lake is pleasant on a spring day, but the area itself is shoddy and there are stray napkins and bottles blowing in the wind, across the floor.  We try to have an objective discussion about the feedback from their teachers.  That is the “purpose” of this lunch by the lake.  But after a while, invariably, it begins to feel like a haranguing.   It isn’t easy to have this conversation in a way that original and other than obligatory, for kids.   “You’ve already mentioned that.”