In a series of short, water-centric essays, Cat Pleska’s My Life in Water (UnCollected Press 2024) spans a lifetime of memories. Each lovingly crafted story is told in elegant prose using the powerful poetic imagery Pleska is noted for.
The first story, “Wash Me Clean,” predates Pleska’s own memories; rather it is a confession by her Aunt Norma, who gave six-month-old Cat a bath, turning her back to search for a towel. And you know where this story is going: never turn your back on a baby in the bathwater. Cat’s aunt nearly let her drown and felt horrible guilt. Fortunately, the baby coughed up water and revived.
One unusual essay blends two stories, the first about learning to swim and the other about a friend’s mother who suffered periodically from mentally illness. In the swimming story, Cat refuses to jump in the deep end of the pool after watching her friend nearly drown while attempting to earn her swimming certificate. In the other half of the essay, her friend’s mother, Maria, is institutionalized during one of her dark periods, brought on by her husband’s frequent disappearances. Maria drowns when another patient pushes her into a pond on the institution’s grounds. Pleska expertly weaves the stories together:
“I never learned to swim. I had recurrent nightmares about drowning. I thought I must have drowned in a previous lifetime, unlike Maria who swallowed unending bitterness and despair, who might have found the pond a release.”
The idea that sometimes death provides a release from pain and suffering is a recurrent theme in this collection.
Another essay fuses the collapse of the Silver Bridge in Point Pleasant that plunged forty-six people to their deaths in the frigid water below with her parents’ flawed marriage. Sections of this essay delve into the defects of the bridge and shortcuts taken in its construction. In other segments, Pleska recalls stories of how her parents met in the dime store where her eighteen-year-old mother was working. How her mother “was enchanted” by her father’s “movie star looks and swagger.” How the marriage went awry almost from the start; her father “was already an alcoholic at twenty-four.” How her mother leaves but then returns despite his problems. She remains married for forty-six years. Again, Pleska weaves the two stories, that of her parent’s marriage and the deaths of people in the collapsed bridge, together beautifully:
“When someone drowns, it is usually fairly quick. My mother’s drowning was her decades-long struggles to cope with my father’s behavior. I am convinced the weight of worry crushed her.”
Other essays cover topics from a grandmother’s life-saving onion poultice to a teenager trying make-up for the first time, from a child’s exciting first trip to the beach to a dangerous white-water rafting trip that creates tension in Cat’s marriage.
Many essays reveal complicated family dynamics. Pleska notes she had a mother who loved her, “and though it might seem odd, it was always enough.” In another essay, a family of five are on their boat on a lake when a storm comes up. They get out of the water, thinking it will be safer. Instead, they are all killed when lightning strikes a tree whose roots they are standing upon. In this story, Pleska notes that her father had always remained distant toward her, perhaps having no idea what to do with a daughter. He was close, however, to Harrison, the boy struck by lightning:
“Maybe what Dad taught Harrison is blood is not thicker than water. Maybe it’s much more fluid, this who-you-love business. Maybe it flows the path of least resistance if you let it. Maybe you float on this notion of the fluidity of love as being a boat on the lake taking you to more solid ground, where all you can do is hope you are safe.”
This story, like so many of the essays in My Life in Water, skillfully uses creative nonfiction techniques to wheel and dive between two subjects that seem unrelated—until the author reveals the connections. With their insight and beauty, Pleska’s revelations both surprise and inspire.
Cat Pleska
Cat Pleska is an award-winning author, educator, storyteller, radio essayist and book reviewer. She lives in West Virginia, with one dog, six cats, one husband and one daughter. Animals outnumber the humans! Her memoir Riding on Comets was reviewed by SLR here.
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