Beckoned Home

Michigan calls to me in the early summer heat of a humid Tennessee day. The trees whisper over the distance and miles. The waves at Higgins Lake echo my heart. I am being summoned and I’m on my way.

My husband doesn’t get it – this ancestral call to come home. And that is what it is for me – home to family, friends, the woods, the crisp air, the ground where I was nurtured and where my roots grow deep still.

He says I am lucky to get to take the kids up there for an extended vacation. But it’s not a want, it’s a need (and it’s no vacation when I’m in charge of both our kids for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for a month – but that’s a whole other story). A need to be not only with family and friends but to have a sense of place and home that is 100% me in this big, big world. Michigan – and Higgins Lake in particular – is interwoven into the fiber of my being. The clear blue-green water, the crisp pine-scented air, the hard worn dirt paths – these aspects are parts of me at a cellular level. And returning to them is a return to myself. An affirmation of all that I am, all that my children are – our past, our present, and our future.

My children are the sixth generation in my family to be a part of Higgins Lake – to get to know it inside and out, summer after summer, year after year. It’s a place so safe, I don’t worry if I don’t see Taggart for a couple hours. I know who he is with and I know if anything happens, everyone knows he’s mine and will treat him like their own until I’m on hand. We all have known each other our whole lives. Our cottages stay as familiar as the backs of our hands – we’re all woe to make too many changes lest we break the spell of safety and sameness.

Grandparents and great-grandparents get to really know their grandchildren. Parents get to share their children with extended family and friends. It’s a place we all cherish and value – and sometimes there is loyalty with a vengeance, love with daggers. Families become disenchanted with one another and leave Higgins. Some argue; some fight in court for the rights to their cottages. Needless to say, people feel very passionate about this place.

It’s not perfect. It has its drawbacks but like a parent’s unconditional love for an unruly child, or a dog that just won’t mind, most have a deep and abiding love for this place that will not be forsaken. Folks that marry into this clique-ish society need to be a good fit. If not, it’s a rough go. Most of us tell those that love us and come to Higgins for the first time, “Hope you like it, we’ll be coming here for life.” We smile but we mean it.

My dad once referred to Higgins in the summer as “an eternal funeral”: the same people, at the same cocktail parties, talking about the same things year after year. Needless to say, he might not have been a perfect fit at Higgins. But for those who love it and have been raised in its warm embrace - for those who see the sameness as a sign that all is right in this small corner of the big, big world - it’s a tonic for the soul.

Although I acknowledge my dad’s misgivings, I make no apologies when I say “I’ll take my Higgins straight up”. I’ll let my kids run free, have coffee with my mom every morning, visit with friends that I consider family, and even attend a cocktail party or two. I’ll walk the trails, breathe the fresh air, and ground myself amidst the safety of the towering pines. I’ll swim out to the raft, walk to Evergreen with my kids, and give thanks to my ancestors.

I am lucky. I hear Michigan beckoning. And, I’m coming home soon.