What You Think About at 4 a.m.

 My cat and my bladder decided that I needed to be awake at 4 a.m. this morning. Naturally, I couldn’t go back to sleep and just laid there … thinking, and a long-lost memory popped into my head. A tragedy that I had forgotten about until now.

I was around 11 and was living with my guardians, Aunt Verta & Uncle Eddie. We were on a family trip to upstate New York, somewhere around Watertown, I think. A relative of Uncle Eddie had a farm there and we went for a visit during the summer. I can’t remember how long we were there; in a children’s mind, it seemed like the whole summer but was probably more like a week.

I remember that we took the 1,000 Island bridge across and naturally had to stop at the Never Never Land on Hill Island. The entrance was a bunch of books with Humpty Dumpty sitting on top (I had to look this up, I did remember Humpty Dumpty) 

It was a pretty lame place but for kids rather fun. There were large nursery rhyme statues throughout the park, some even scary like the witch from Hansel & Gretel and the big bad wolf. That was it but at the time it was new and exciting. The only thing that exists there now is the observation tower which we did not go up.

We had such a fun time at the farm. GH and I fed the cows and did other farm chores. We got to see the cows milked, rode on the tractor, and baled hay. To us, these were fun things to do, probably not so much for the cousins who had to do it every day. I can't remember if there were other children there but I'm assuming there were. 

There was also a lake there and we spent a lot of time fishing. I remember Uncle Eddie rowing us out on the lake and all I could catch were lake sunfish or “sunnies” as they were called. They were little fish full of bones and usually, you threw them back because they weren’t worth the work to eat. But after catching not but sunnies I was determined to eat one. So, I cleaned it and we fried it up. There wasn’t a lot of meat and a lot of bones but it was a good fish, very buttery tasting.

It was a great vacation until tragedy struck, and this is the part that I had obviously buried down deep until this morning. I remember a toddler drowned in the lake. The rescuers had brought his body up and were trying to revive him to no avail. The thing I remember the most was how blue he was. We were standing far away and I’m assuming that we were hustled away after that by the adults, but I remember.

Probably why I couldn’t go back to sleep.