The cottage

When I was a kid we spent every single summer vacation at my Grandma and Grandpa's cottage in Muskoka, from the time I was three months old until I was in my early twenties.

I loved it. Truly adored every second of every day we spent there. I could wax poetic about the glory days by the shores of Tasso Lake for hours. Hours, I tell you.

Every once in a while I'll smell something that elicits a scent memory of the cottage - summer sweat, musty books, a damp forest floor, dry leaves, or some heady concoction of all four - and unexpected pictures of the cottage flood my mind, to my greatest delight.

Pine sap stuck to my bare feet. Bactine on mosquito bites. Noxema on sunburns. Bonfire smoke clinging to my clothes and hair. Melted marshmallow guts burning my tongue.

Looking back, it was all good. All of it. Every sweet moment.

The cottage is gone. Sold by my Grandfather when his mind was slipping back in the mid 90s. And both my Grandparents are gone now too. But the memories remain.

Yesterday and today's squares somehow remind me of the cottage. The sandy earth tones and the cedar green, of course. But especially the 1950s rusty brown and avocado that covered the ancient cottage furniture - remnants from a bygone time that found themselves living out their retirement years up at the lake.

If I could go back, even for five minutes, I would do it in a heartbeat. I'd walk down to the shore, push my feet into the sand, and touch the surface of the water with the flat of my hand.

And just be.

September 7 & 8, 2009




If, when I get there, I get to choose my heaven, it might just be the tiny cottage on Tasso Lake.