HOLT: Why the family keeps going back to that lake

"Why does auntie keep coming back to this lake, Mom?" asks my daughter. But even as she asks the question, she understands. It is the place that holds my family's collective memories. The lake where swimming lessons in the city crystallized into that moment when you realize you are able to float on an inner tube with the cousins and kick all by yourself all the way across that cove to that rock where you and the cousins jump into the water.

Each campsite and every curve of the road holds a memory. My sister swears that is the road where I lost control of the bicycle (no brakes) and I landed in that ditch and the bike flew and landed in that tree. And even though she was 2 and I was 10, and even though the ditch has been filled in and the tree removed, and even though she is on the wrong loop altogether, she tells everyone that this is the loop and that is the tree.

Daughter's friends now invited along are told the stories as we drive up to our annual trip to the lake. That is the ferny spring at the curve where brother/uncle had altitude sickness and threw up. That is the campground young mommy camped in when she was younger and the other cousins will remember the year of "The Big Pizza Fight" where she did not get pizza after a series of uncontrollable events and a sudden lack of cash.

Now the young nieces and nephews are starting to tell the younger nieces and nephews their own stories. That is the bridge where the toddlers discover every year they can run back and forth between scattered campsites and the bathrooms. This is the drive where they rode push toys downhill at full speed. They recognize certain graduations like being big enough to join the flotilla of inflatables by the buoy one has to swim out and touch.

That is the road where one with a learner's permit was handed the keys and allowed to help drive for the necessary ice run.

Why do oldest auntie and aunts, uncles, cousins and friends make sure they return to the same place to go to that campground and that beach at the lake?

For the same reason you, child, turn to me, early on an April morning walking to the school bus stop and say wistfully, "It smells like the lake. I wish we were camping at that lake right now."

Because you do know the answer. Because you feel that need to return to it, like we do.

Holt is a landscape horticulture graduate of Merced College who divides her time between Merced and Mariposa. Send comments or questions to her at columns@modbee.com.