Some of the best days of your life don't announce themselves when they're happening.
They just feel like another Saturday morning.
For Louie and me, a lot of those mornings started around 5:00 A.M.
Long before sunrise. Long before most sensible people were awake. And definitely before the Wally Weekenders showed up and destroyed the water.
Back then, we spent countless mornings on Lake Ray Hubbard and the Brazos River with family and friends, chasing something every serious waterskier understands.
That perfectly flat water that barely seems to breathe. Water so smooth that the sky reflects off it like a mirror.
You don't wait until a convenient hour to find water like that. When you've got it, you go.
And when Louie was little, I didn't always need an alarm clock.
He was only five years old and already laying down the law.
He even had rules for his father.
And everybody knew it. The little enforcer was watching.
At the time, those mornings were simply our life. Get the boat ready. Load the skis. Find the calmest water. Laugh with our friends. Ski until the lake started filling with weekend traffic and the glass disappeared underneath a thousand wakes.
Then do it all again whenever we could.
I don't remember ever thinking, “Ric, pay attention. These are going to become some of the best memories of your life.”
You don't think that way while you're living them. You're too busy living them.
Years later, I began looking back at those mornings differently.
Louie wasn't five anymore. The boats changed. The years passed. Friends went different directions. Life did what life always does.
It kept moving.
But somehow I could still hear that little voice.
That's where “Reflections on the Water” really came from.
On the surface, it's a song about waterskiing. It's about sunrise, boats, glass water, barefoot skiing, family, friends and beating the Wally Weekenders onto the lake.
But underneath all of that, it's a father looking backward and realizing what those mornings actually were.
They were time with his son.
And time is the one thing you can't put back in the boat and take out again tomorrow.
A boat leaves a wake behind it. For a while, you can look backward and see exactly where you've been. Then the water begins to settle. The wake gets smaller. Eventually it's gone.
Life isn't much different.
The years roll by behind us. The moments disappear. Children grow up. And one day you realize the ordinary mornings you barely thought twice about have become the memories you'd give almost anything to experience one more time.
That's why the ending of this song means so much to me:
But the memories never do.
The water always settles. The glass eventually disappears. The dock gets quiet.
But somehow those mornings are still out there.
I can still see the sunrise. I can still see that flat water.
And if I listen closely enough...
I can still hear a five-year-old boy telling his father:
“Reflections on the Water” is dedicated to Louie, and to every parent who eventually discovers that some of the greatest days of their life were happening while they were simply busy living them.
Because after all these years, I've realized something.
The greatest reflections were never really on the water.