I thought, “I’m going to do it. It’s dangerous, but I probably won’t die… Probably? Anyway, I hope I don’t die.” Pulling myself up out of the sandy bottomed shore water, I slowly followed my brother Billy to the other side of the park picnic area. I felt like I was carelessly stepping out onto a wobbly, dangerous ledge.

Being the coddled youngest child of our family, I felt fearful to try new things. At seventeen years of age, I became fully aware that in one short year I’d graduate from high school and would need to find a job. I recognized that my fears and inhibitions could prevent me from living a normal, functional life if I allowed them to. I resolved to grow up brave and strong because the one thing I desperately wanted was to experience being independent, to get married, and to have children.

After Mass earlier in the day, Mom made lunch for a Sunday picnic at the Eau Pleine park. Using her old crank grinder, she ground a large chunk of bologna and several of her dill pickles into a mixing bowl. Then, after stirring a large dollop of Miracle Whip into this mixture, she generously spread it on slices of bread for sandwiches. Cookies made yesterday were packed in the cooler, along with potato chips, a watermelon, several bottles of Marshfield brewery beer and a jug of green Kool-Aid.

            After enjoying our meal together at a park table, several of my siblings went boating and water skiing. Mom and Daddy sat under the shade trees to visit with other folks their age. I put on a life jacket and wandered to the beach. I knew there was a sudden drop-off further out in the water but wasn’t sure where it was. Earlier in the summer I had taught myself to dog paddle, but I wasn’t sure that I could do it well enough to save my life if I got in too deep.

Playing in the cool water felt wonderful. Confident that the life jacket would hold me up, I practiced different swim strokes. When I was tired, I sat in waist deep water to rest. That was when my brother Billy came to the beach and yelled, “Kathy, come on! You’ve got to try getting up on water skis!”

Water skiing wasn’t one of my great lifetime goals. But on the other hand, my brother offered me a special invitation. That was worth a lot right there. A rare moment of deciding to step out into the unknown washed over me and I said, “Okay.”

Seven years earlier, my brother Casper had built a boat for water skiing. He and his friends had enjoyed many weekends at the park water skiing and playing baseball. This was the first time I’d ever been to the park when he was.

Casper idled a short distance from the shore in his boat. Billy had me slip my feet into the water skis and handed me the tow rope. He said, “Use your leg muscles to help you get up.”

As the boat accelerated away from me, I found myself following it. As the speed picked up, I rose higher in the water. First, I was waist deep, then knee deep. This is when I realized what Billy meant about using my legs. I almost got into a full stand before my legs buckled. I plunged deep into the flowage water. Deeper and deeper until I remembered to let go of the tow line.

Casper circled around in the boat while I recovered the skis and tow line. We tried several times to get me up on the skis, but each attempt was a photocopy of the first. When I gave up, I was satisfied that I’d had the experience and didn’t need to try doing it again.

My seventeenth summer was a very educational year. I learned not only to let go of my childhood and my childish fears, but the necessity of letting go of the water-skiing tow rope after falling.