Dear Lake America,
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
Gosh, sorry. I never know how to start. You’d think I’d be smoother at dispensing advice, but I’m the same awkward ocean basin I’ve always been.
It’s been more than a year since I, the Gulf of Mexico, was renamed against my will as the Gulf of America. Now I am morally called to help others through the bizarre experience of having President Donald Trump and friends change your name in a hissy fit. I’ve doled out pep talks to everyone from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to Palm Beach International Airport. I’ve even written to the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, you know, just in case.
Being an aquatic therapist never gets easier! But it’s crucial that we bodies of water, airports, mountain ranges and football stadiums form a united front. Together we are stronger than any executive order or AI slop video of Canada geese firing semiautomatic weapons.
Lake America, you may feel isolated, like the only tide pool in the world being used as a pawn in a pointless trade war. But you are not alone. Nor will you be the last icon to suffer a deeply humiliating rebrand. It’s a matter of time before the other Great Lakes are renamed Lake Hot Dog and Lake Buc-ee’s.
Too soon? You’re depressed. You are very much in the grieving stage. You’ve been called Lake Ontario for, what, 400 years? You have celebrated your dual citizenship, your multicultural borders, your indigenous heritage, your channels of transit with the power to open up worlds. For what? To be reduced to a T-shirt war.
Believe me, I know. I never thought I’d be screen-printed on tank tops among “Scarface” swim trunks and phallic bottle openers at every gaudy beach shop, but that’s the level of sophistication America is working with. It’s just us and airbrushed trucker caps out here fighting for our lives.
You and I share another kinship, Lake America. One of my borders is Florida, a paradise that once attracted untold Canadians. Political hostilities have made them feel unwelcome in their winter home, and I feel terrible about that. I love Canadians and their rounded vowels. Before my life turned into a Monty Python skit, the worst I ever hurt a Canadian was via wayward jellyfish.
Sorry, I’m making this about me.
Lake America, here’s what you need to remember:
No one owns you, now matter how firmly the folks at Google press their lips to the president’s hindquarters. Not the U.S. Interior Department, not the Board on Geographic Names, not the amateur cartographers. Even some Trump voters who live in the town of Ontario, New York, aren’t behind this. You’re winning hearts and minds.
Still, friend, let yourself feel the pain as deeply as your fathoms allow. Otherwise, those buried emotions will churn up when you least expect. I’ll be going along fine, la la la, then Dolly Parton dies, and we immediately get a tropical system named Dolly, and I’m an emotional disaster! I’m going to be tossing storms ashore all week just to climb out of my feelings.
Know who you are. You are an international body of water, home to flora and fauna, commerce and leisure. You are one of the top 20 largest lakes in the world, a masterwork carved in the Last Glacial Period. You will endure long past your petty infighters, ebbing and flowing over the sloppy and ill-fated contours of human history. You are Lake Ontario.
Endless seas of love,
The Gulf of Mexico
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