Notre Dame Magazine invites personal essays of no more than 250 words on subjects of nostalgic interest to alumni of all ages. Selected submissions will be published in a future print edition or online at magazine.nd.edu. Please send fun, meaningful or evocative stories from your student days on the topics listed below to associate editor Michelle Cuneo at mmcdani2@nd.edu. New topics to come each issue.
PRANKS: Deadline May 4, 2025
GAMEDAY: Deadline August 3, 2025
Eden on Saint Joseph’s Lake
The lake was bathtub-warm on the surface, refreshingly cold below. We would swim a little, but once you stopped moving, the fish started biting. It was disconcerting enough to chase us back onto the beach — too grand a word for the tiny section of sand between the water’s edge and the path that made its figure eight around both lakes.
My girlfriend, Rose, had graduated and returned to Notre Dame to work, so I stayed on campus that summer because I didn’t want to be anywhere she wasn’t. I lived in the firehouse by night and worked as a cook on Highway 31 by day.
By the lakes, you could imagine the wilderness before those priests cleared the forest and built their Golden Dome. Isolated there, we felt she and I were the only two people in the world, the first two ever to have loved so deeply.
We spent that summer at our private beach while the sun warmed our languid bones. We’d reach across the gap between our towels to hold hands. Warmth on our skin pushed to our hearts, and I remember her leaning over to kiss my cheek and whisper, “I love you.”
After four decades of marriage, Rose has again returned to Notre Dame to work, and I followed because I don’t want to be anywhere she isn’t. When I see the lakes now, I think back to that summer so many years ago, when we made Eden from a tiny beach in northern Indiana.
— M.J. Carroll ’85
A Lyons’ share of memories
My home at Notre Dame was Lyons Hall. When I realized that we Lyonites essentially lived in a lake house, I was delighted: As a student with no real income, my dream of living on a lake had happened far sooner than expected! Though the lakes’ utility in my life evolved each year, they remained a refuge and cornerstone of my college experience.
When I was a freshman, the lakes were my homesickness remedy. So distraught I couldn’t sleep, the only thing I knew to do when the weight of my new life set in was to head to some private corner of the lakes where I could call my parents and sob.
During the pandemic my sophomore year, the lakes offered me the possibility of a social life. Countless nights were spent hammocking along the lake and finding normalcy, friendship and beauty during a very strange semester.
As a junior, I learned from the lakes how to say goodbye. Set to the soundtrack of 30, Adele’s most recent (and most heartbreaking) album, the steady, silent certainty of the lake paths allowed me to grapple with, and finally accept, my first experiences in loss.
When I lived off campus my senior year, biking by the lakes on my way home became a nightly ritual. With my hair flying behind me, I’d smile at them the way I would an old friend and pinch myself for the millionth time. I couldn’t believe this was my life.
— Juliet Webb ’23
Lake walks
About once a week, Katie and I would walk from our dorm room in Walsh Hall, past the Grotto and around the lakes. In all kinds of weather, in all kinds of years, from the crunch of winter to the eerie calm of a COVID spring, it didn’t matter. We walked and talked — no topic off limits.
One soggy spring day, we noticed pictures of a couple tacked to the trees. Realizing we were about to witness a proposal, we hid, giggling in the bushes until we saw them walk by. He got down on one knee and proposed, she said yes, and the happy couple went on.
Katie cried happy tears then — total strangers, yet she cried for them. I wondered then as I often had, who could ever deserve a heart like hers?
Four years later, Katie texted me pictures of her own proposal: Her fiance had tacked up pictures of them on trees. Another year later, I walked the lakes alone just before she got married in the basilica. And one year after that, I walked the lakes with Katie and her new husband, and I knew. Here was someone who deserved to lake-walk with her forever.
Whoever I walk the lakes with now, part of me will always be walking them with her, our childhood secrets always spilling, hovering somewhere in time. No matter how old I get, my heart is filled with gratitude for the people who loved me into today.
— Amanda Jarosik ’21
A fisherman’s prayer
I’ve never caught a fish without my grandad. I’m 29 now, and that’s still my truth.
In 2013, at 18, I was placed in Lewis Hall, next to the lakes. In my family, catching your own fish is a rite of passage, a marker of maturity. It felt like the perfect sign — the right time — to prove I could do it on my own, before graduation — independent, self-sufficient.
Day after day, I tried — adjusting the bobber, changing spots, praying harder. No fish ever found my hook.
I called my grandfather daily, first about fishing, then as the weather changed, his sermons and his faith. What began as a desire to prove my independence grew into the lifeline that held me steady. I listened as he spoke of God’s timing, abundance and what it means to have trust in God.
July 2014: Five rings, a voicemail . . . Three weeks of silence.
August 2014: Across from Lewis Hall, a girl with no guide casts her line into the lake. Silence presses in, so she prays from her heart as she’s been taught: “Father, I’ve spent so much time trying to prove I can do this alone. But today, I see that what I really need is You and time with my family. Please, give me more time. If it’s Your will, heal him. Help me trust that I don’t need independence — only You.”
Eleven years later, I’ve never caught a fish on my own. But my grandfather, God, and I have a boat plenty.
— Indi Jackson ’17
Benched plans
On a mild day in February 1994, my then-girlfriend and I visited campus after enjoying a nice lunch at a local restaurant. We prayed at the Grotto, and then I suggested we take a walk around St. Mary’s Lake, just like we had many times as students. What she didn’t know was that I had plans to propose, hoping to find a quiet spot on the far side of the lake with a stunning view of the campus.
To my dismay, she responded, “I don’t think so. These are new shoes, and I don’t want to get them muddy.”
With my grand plan suddenly derailed, panic set in, and I scrambled for a backup. And so, in a sudden moment of inspiration combined with desperation, I proposed on a bench near Old College. Later that year, we were married at Sacred Heart, and we celebrated 30 wonderful years this past November.
That bench, combined with this story, has since become a cherished and humorous stop whenever we tour campus with first-time guests — definitely a more convenient spot than making our way around St. Mary’s Lake!
— John (and Vicki) Maxwell ’91
Finding light by the lake
As was the case for many, the fall of 2020 was a time with a great deal of darkness and difficulty for me. Living in a single room, I struggled with feeling lonely much of the time. I longed to hug my friends, to have movie nights in each others’ dorms, to hang out in LaFun and have meals together in the dining hall. In this time, when I most needed company, St. Mary’s Lake was there for me. I spent hours sitting near Bond Hall in a spot that began to feel like my own personal bench.
I would sit here in the morning doing homework, in the afternoon in between classes and, my favorite, in the evening to watch the sunset. Whenever I felt like I needed space, sought to relieve the anxiety of the pandemic, or wanted a quiet place to reflect, the lake was there.
“Everything is so hard, but sometimes we just need to put down the weight we’re carrying and find ways to feel joy,” my friend Amanda said over one of our weekly Sunday dinners. So, we walked to St. Mary’s Lake and we did just that. As the sun was setting, we stood in content silence, and for a moment, I felt complete peace, full of gratitude to be with a friend I loved in a place I loved. There was so much unknown about the future, but on that October evening, there was so much for which we could be thankful.
— Eileen Mostyn ’21