*Rememberings*: We Always

I'll tell you about my long-ago summer place, you tell me about yours.

👋 Yes, it’s me.

My grandparents’ cottage had a long sandy driveway cut through whispering birch and oak and pines. Modest cabin cruiser on the left side of the dock, aluminum fishing boat on the right. A well that still pumped water. A phone still on a party line. An outhouse until they put in basic plumbing. No furnace, but two fireplaces, one inside where we hung wet clothes to dry, the other, built of stone, outside where the grown-ups sometimes cooked. A bright festive box of games and activities my grandmother kept for my sister and me. A bowl of toffees I disliked but ate anyway. Neighbors who loved and doted on us little girls. 

↑ My grandparents at the cottage when it was new to them, and the way it lives in my memory. ↓

The cottage was in Ontario, on Pigeon Lake, in a town called Bobcaygeon, on the Trent-Severn Waterway with its wonderful system of locks and canals. My grandparents—my mother’s parents—drove up from Buffalo to spend every summer, and we drove up from Pennsylvania for ten days or two weeks, as much vacation time as my father could allot. 

The thing about a summer cottage, or any magical place you visit once a year, is the way it induces ritual and habit. Wanting to relive the magic, you repeat the motions, and soon you have tradition encased in the amber of your fond desire. We always this. We always that. The first night’s dinner was always spaghetti and meatballs. We always got licorice ice cream at Kawartha Dairy. There were always crayfish in the lake to fish for, with a chunk of Lebanon bologna lashed to a small flat rock by red-and-white bakery twine whose other end we’d tied to a sturdy stick, and when the crayfish ventured far enough onto the rock to be lifted from the water, we always transported them to a vacation of their own in the blue plastic kiddie boat we’d filled with lake water, rocks and sand. We always went to town by boat. Gassed up at the marina. (The smell of gasoline can still transport me back there.) Collected the mail at the P.O., watched the swing bridge open and close, bought groceries at the IGA, Archie comics at the dime store. My father and grandfather always drank Molson and Labatt’s, sometimes with breakfast, and went on adventures where they could count on getting into a little mischief. We always snacked on Smarties and tarts, and I, a known picky eater, got to lick and stick a colored star on a chart for every meal I ate enough of. After supper my grandfather always fell asleep on the floor in front of the fireplace. When my mother and grandmother and sister and I had finished playing cards and nibbling on dry-roasted peanuts washed down with Coke on ice, my grandmother always poked him awake with her foot. “Arnold. Arnold!” 

The days were long and mostly sunny, full of mosquito bites and mud pies. We took the boat to Fenelon Falls and Lindsay and picnicked by the locks. We roasted marshmallows and listened for loons. The neighbors, whom my social grandparents knitted into close friends, came and sat and ate and drank and smoked and talked and laughed while I listened, too young to appreciate that this was life at its happiest and loosest and most carefree.

Always didn’t last forever—my grandparents sold the cottage when they moved to Florida in the early 1970s—but while it lasted, this is how it was, always always always. Which is exactly how long I will remember it, and them.

Your turn! Do you have a favorite memory of a summer place and what you did there and the dear dead ones it brings back to you? Please share it in the comments ❤️

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