Summer without End

Wayne Scott in The Millions:

When I was on a vacation in the Virgin Islands with my two brothers and my 70-year old mother — an exceptional hiatus from our lives with family and children, just the four of us, to celebrate my mother’s milestone birthday, our good fortune that we had had her in our lives for such a long time — I happened upon a collection of essays by E.B. White, a book that the house owners had left on the shelf. I had read White’s autobiographical piece, “Once More to the Lake” in college, but here I was, a man in his late-40s, again under its spell. Throughout our time at that lovely house under the clear skies, overlooking the deep-blue Atlantic Ocean, I kept returning to his rumination on summer memories.

Written in August 1941 and published originally in Harper’s, the story is deceptively simple. White takes his son to a camp for a short vacation. It is the same camp, by Belgrade Lake in Maine, where his father had taken him many times when he was growing up, over 30 years before. He writes, “I wondered how time would have marred this unique, this holy spot.” Except for the sound of outboard motors on boats, a mid-century technological advance — a “petulant, irritable sound” that “whined about one’s ears like mosquitoes” — he found it to be the same place. “Once More to the Lake” is not a psychological exploration, except for one recurring detail. As White sees his son engage in activities that he himself used to do — baiting a fish hook, pulling on a bathing suit — he transposes identities, imagining himself as his father to his younger self. The jarring illusion keeps returning.

More here.