Monday, October 27, 2014

I'm the One Who Fell in the Lake

My grandma turned 89 this past weekend. We drove up to Battle Creek, MI to celebrate with her. We, this time, is not the royal we so much as all of my grandma’s living children and their children and their children’s children.

Yeah, there were a lot of us in my aunt’s house, is what I’m saying.

My aunt’s house is on a lake. Okay, so it’s not ON the lake, but the backdoor opens and if you take about ten steps out onto her deck, you’re almost IN the lake. So yeah, there was water right there, water that little girls were yearning to throw sticks and rocks into.

I took the girls out to ‘look at the lake’ a little while after we arrived. Jaxon, my nephew, wasn’t there yet so the girls played with sticks, tossed fallen leaves into the water, and just enjoyed a very mild October day in southern Michigan.

Before we left that morning, Olivia asked to wear her Elsa dress to the party. I figured, what the heck, she’s already been trick or treating (yes, our town had trick or treating on October 25. Why? I don’t know, they’re stupid, I guess) and so I let her wear it.

I did take extra clothes, though, just in case she wanted to change at some point in the day.

We got there, the dress and hair caused exclamations of joy and delight, the water was appreciated, lunch was eaten, Olivia decided she wanted to change out of her dress and into the warm pants and shirt I’d brought for her and then…Jaxon showed up.

The girls wanted to show him the water. Olivia kept telling Jaxon that Alyssa was going to throw him in the water. Then she’d laugh like a maniac and tell him she was just kidding, that Lyss wasn’t actually going to do that.

Out we went to toss more sticks and rocks into the water.

My aunt’s deck is built up to a sea wall which has a step about three feet down. That step is about two inches above the water. Last summer, when the lake was higher, the step was actually under water by about two or three inches.

Olivia had climbed that sea wall countless times earlier in the day with no trouble at all. She refused help from me whenever I offered it. She was fine with climbing up and down, thank you very much.

I watched her climb up to get another stick and then, I watched her start to climb back down the three foot step. I watched her slip and tumble. I watched her roll across the step and plop right into the water.

I was about six feet away from her when she started slipping. I was stepped down off the sea wall and onto the step when she made her first splash into the water. I was pulling her out of the water before she even had time to stand up in the eighteen inches of water that lapped against the step.

She shivered and said, “My shoes are full of water.”

I put her on the sea wall and then onto the deck and told her, “Baby, your entire body is soaked, not just your shoes!”

But she couldn’t stand those wet shoes on her feet. While my cousin Aaron went to get her a towel, I took her shoes off and poured the water out of them. When the towel arrived, I helped her out of her clothes and into the house, where we dried her off, put her clothes into the washer and put her dress back on.

She declared, “I’m not wearing any underwear!”

I told her that if she didn’t tell anyone, no one would know. She giggled.

We waited for the wash cycle to be done with her clothes and it was time to go home. Her shoes were still soaked so she had to be carried to the car.

Alyssa was not amused by this entire spectacle. She kept saying, “I’m the one who has a bad cold, why is she the one being carried?”

Liv would answer, “Well, I’m the one who fell in the lake.”

By the fifth time this answer came, Lyss was over it.

When asked if falling in the lake was kind of fun, Olivia nodded with a sly grin. If I hadn’t been there to see it happen I might have thought she’d done it on purpose.

When we got home the first thing Olivia told Tom was, “I’m not wearing any underwear because I fell in the lake.”

Alyssa’s eyes might have rolled out of her head if they weren’t stuck in there from all the snot in the poor girl’s sinuses. You’re welcome for that image.

1 comment:

Julie said...

I have to be honest, I was kind of hoping you were the one who fell in the lake!

So glad there was no harm done. I wish you would have had a video camera so you could win AFHV.