Dear readers,

Lacustrine [luh–kuhs-trin] (adj) means “of or relating to a lake” and was the Dictionary.com word of the day on May 24. Lacustrine appeared in my inbox like one of life’s tiny, deniable miracles. Isn’t it weird that happened? Lacustrine could either be claimed as kismet or written off as coincidence. Lately, I’ve chosen the former.

Like Mom telling us before she died that she would break the first plate at my brother T.J.’s wedding, and Robby, my son, breaking it. Or how my Aunt Shue—my fairy godmother and the woman Mom dubbed her “eyes on the ground”—came for my MFA graduation, booked the Davenport Grand, and was greeted by stained glass giraffes (Mom’s animal). 

I like to see these occurrences as constellations: patterns in the sky I use to find my way. Even though connecting the dots to form the Big Dipper is an arbitrary choice, the stars are real enough.

Lacustrine is a technical term for geologists and biologists—lacustrine sediment, for example. But language is flexible, and I’m doing some repurposing because this word found its way to me while I was grappling with the idea of home.

The night before, I had returned from my Aunt Shue’s home in New Berlin, a city on the border of Milwaukee. I was there for the weekend for my cousin Bug’s graduation from Marquette University; my Aunt Kitty (Bug’s mom) was throwing a vaccinated-only gathering. For the first time in over a year and a half, I saw my loud, loving, eccentric family. 

I was experiencing the whiplash of spending a little less than two days in the Midwest when this word appeared in my inbox. I prefer Merriam Webster’s definition: “of, relating to, formed in, living in, or growing in lakes.” Other forms include lacustral (adj), and even lacustrian (n)—“lake-dweller.” The word is derived from Latin: lacus, meaning lake.

I belong to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, where I spent summers with my big, crazy Catholic family my entire childhood. Having “tea parties” with cousins at the lake bottom, ripping tufts of seaweed on our way to the surface, gasping for air. Floating on my back, eyes closed. Noodle fights on the rickety raft. Mom teaching me to dive off the pier, how I belly flopped dozens of times until I got it, when she put her arm underneath my stomach so I would have no choice but to jump headfirst, over her arm. Hearing the warbled sounds of my loud family while underwater. 

Once underwater, all lakes are the same, or in the very least, I convince myself of this. Find a lake; return home. Pretend when I surface that I’ll see one of their faces. Pretend I’ll see her.

Homes are places, people, and yes, even things. Like the “sister bracelet” Aunt Shue gave me before I left. Mom is the oldest of seven (crazy Catholic family), with just one brother. 

Aunt Shue had been holding onto Mom’s because she had lost her own in Amsterdam. She wanted to wear Mom’s for a while, but the intention had always been to pass it on to me. I think Aunt Shue could tell I needed to carry something back to Spokane. I have many objects that connect me to Mom, but this also connects me to the wild group known as the Dhein women. I couldn’t possibly calculate how much of my mom is these women—how talking to them is the closest I come to talking to her. And I think I connect them to her; I imagine that’s why I’m even allowed to wear the bracelet.

When I arrived at Spokane International Sunday evening, the security guard asked me if Spokane is home. I told him yes because it was the simplest answer, and true. Spokane is the place I’m raising my children. Of course it’s home.

“Welcome back,” he said.

The longer, more complex answer is that part of me exists always in those endless summer days because I know that’s where Mom is, too. Home is something I take with me: “of, relating to, formed in, living in, or growing in lakes.”