“People are packages” my husband’s friend once told him. Everybody brings a mix of traits, some we love, and some we would just as soon live without. In the end, we have to take the whole package and celebrate the traits we love and accept some that we don’t. The wisdom of that thought has entered many a conversation, been given much consideration, and applied to so many situations over the years for both my husband and myself.

This time of year, as summer comes to a close, lake people start to think of the frenzy of living on a lake in autumn. Normal leaf raking and plant trimming is just the beginning; it’s also time to winterize boats, take down slip covers, and pull out docks. Irrigation systems from the lake need to be blown out, swimming rafts pulled in, tubes deflated and stored protectively from rodents. The list is long and in the first few years of lake living it is an exciting time, but ti seems that all the summer play time on the lake turns into a long list of tasks once fall comes.

Recently, a friend and I were commiserating about the endless tasks involved in lake life. After comparing lists of all the work that a lake home requires, I was a little down about the work that was ahead. My friend said her family was even considering moving off their lake. We both began to dream about the easy life; life without docks, without lake weeds, without splintered paddles, popped tubes and broken jet skis. The dream carried on for a bit… we daydreamed about sitting quietly in our (non-lakeshore) backyards sipping lemonade while the kids (not often found around the lakes). June and Ward Cleaver didn’t even have it that good. That was life!

Later that night my family enjoyed dinner on our deck with the privacy and view that only the lake can provide. It was idyllic. After dinner one of our kids wanted to swim, another wanted to swing, and the other two wanted to go inside. The beauty was that they all got to do what they wanted and my husband and I got to spend some time together watching them all. The next day was spent tubing, bobbing in the water, and then we had a dockside dinner. After which we met up with some friends to watch fireworks launched over the lake. This was the life! But wait a minute, just yesterday I’d felt boxed in and tied down because of the lake. Today I’m feeling like the luckiest person alive; what a mixed bag, what a…package.

We all recognize that we must take the god with the bad. Lake living has aspects that are so wonderful that they make the downside all worthwhile. Take a look at your family photo album and I bet you’ll find that many of your favorite photos take place on, or near, your lake.

Life is full of packages; yes even people are packages. Remember when you first met your spouse? What traits attracted you? Perhaps it  was their enthusiasm and emotional zest; perhaps it was the way they brought a sense of calm and peacefulness into your world. Whatever it was it made you want to spend the rest of your life with them. Now, many years down the road you may look at them and see some other traits. Their lack of enthusiasm and zest for cleaning out the garage, the way in which their calmness is eerily similar to indifference in the things you feel are important.

But people, like lakeside living, aren’t perfect. They aren’t buffet lines where we can take the traits we like and pass on the those we don’t (I can see it now, “I’ll take two helpings of loving and accepting, and one of fun to be around, but I’ll pass on the grumpy in the morning and the always late please.) No, people really are packages. They are packages of both good and bad that you’ve accepted into your life because you could see pat the bad and cherish the good. Focusing on the good can help us appreciate one another and help us feel the love that first brought us together. It can help us to feel grateful instead of bitter, loving instead of hating, and accepting rather than judging.

I love Oprah’s “grateful journal” idea. At the end of the day you are to write down several things that you are grateful for from that day in an effort to focus on the good things in life. I guess it’s a lot like counting your blessings. Practice this and, I believe, it becomes an endless list of positives, a completely beautiful way to look at the package of life.

This autumn, as we begin that long list of lake chores, or get busy with all of our back to school activities and our patience wears thing, perhaps we can take a page from that journal and focus on our lake lifestyle (or lakestyle). What aspects of lake life are we grateful for? Who knows, maybe we could even share some of these thoughts with those we love so they know just how grateful we are for the package they bring to our lives!

Lake life, and friends and loved ones. These packages are definitely worth celebrating.

                                                           Celebrating life on the water, 

By Nancy Henke