I guess the cabin seed was always in my mind. I was an up-north boy at heart, living in the big city with a huge void in my life. “We don’t need two places to take of,” she said but always my whining got to her and finally we went to look at property. It was 1984 and the two oldest kids were in college. The youngest was fifteen. Somehow the name Crosslake was fixated in my mind so that’s where we went to look. It became apparent to me in a hurry, that we weren’t the only one’s looking and cheap property, was not a synonym for a lake place near Crosslake.
We settled for one of the smaller lakes off the beaten path and then one day the relator called and said something had just come on the market so we rushed up north. It was a house trailer on a nice lot and the look she gave me was---"I don’t think so.” I had brought my ice auger as it was February and one of her mandates was it had to have sand out front. I drilled and then reached down into the icy water and pulled up a handful of sand. We signed on the dotted line.
A month or so later we came and signed the final papers and got the keys. I was going to be funny and carry her over the threshold but I didn’t have to lift her up as she jumped into my arms when an army of mice scurried out, from under the furniture. We both slept in the car that night. The next day we burned most of the furniture, patched every hole we could find and drove the critters out. But she had quit fighting me, it was now, for her-- a challenge.
Long story short, we used the trailer seasonally for a few years and then made plans for a house. I sent her to the house planer and said, “You plan it.” I wanted nothing to do with it, my love was outside the doors. And she did and she loved it and so did I. It took five years to finish it as we were on a pay as you go plan. Five years of every weekend, vacation and holiday working on the house. Then we retired and moved in. Just in time for the grandkids.
I think the next ten years were the happiest ones of my life. Christmases, Thanksgiving, 4th of July’s and Memorial days with the grandkids. Deer hunting across the road and snowmobiling. Then the grandkids got older and found new friends and got in sports and the visits became less and less. We bought a motor home and traveled in the winter. Then one day, eleven years after we moved in, she got sick and died and nothing was ever the same again. I spent some time in a self-imposed pity party and then one day I found a new love. We have traveled and gone places I never dreamed of going and are having so much fun together. We share a home in the winter in Arizona but in the summer we both go back to our own lake homes. I’m sure her story before meeting me, is much like mine.
My neighbors grew old and moved away. My new neighbors are wonderful people but my kids are ten years older than they are. Because of the virus this year I am kind of sequestered. My health is okay but it wouldn’t take much to turn it around. This afternoon I sat on the deck and listened to the neighbor kids playing in the water. I love the sound of kids having fun. The speed boats and the wave runners. But somehow my mind keeps drifting back to a time and a place when it was my own grandkids laughing and playing on the shoreline. A time that has come and sadly gone. A time that today, makes me go into my office and write things this.
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