A Labor of Love

I’ve spent the past week at our family cottage on Higgins Lake and opening the cottage is more than most family members can fathom or partake in.  Each has their own set of reasons: Busy kids, camps, sports, and activities; physical distance which makes it hard to get here for opening week-end (Memorial Day); perhaps some view it as a vacation home they aren’t inclined to clean and would rather hire done; and then there’s simply the knowledge on most of the family’s part that my mom – as the 71 year old matriarch to our Montague clan – will take good care and have the cottage clean and ready for everyone when camp opens over the 4th of July.

Built in 1928  by my great-grandparents, with eight bedrooms in the main cottage, an apartment on the garage, and a one-bedroom cabin to boot, there’s a lot that goes into getting this cottage ready for its summer guests. Given that it is uninhabited from October to May, give or take a few chipmunks, mice, and spiders, there are a lot of cobwebs to clear away, dust to be swept up, and half-eaten acorns to be shaken out of leftover sweatshirts from summer’s past.  Not to mention the mini mouse droppings to vacuum out of kitchen drawers . . . And that’s before we even get to the mopping, lemon oiling, window cleaning (with 1598 panes of glass I took one look and said to my mom, “We are calling in the professionals!”), and scrubbing of sinks, toilets, bathtubs, and showers. And the leaf blowing, gutter cleaning and pressure washing of sidewalks and porches. 

The beach house comes last – the structure down on the water where we store all our beach chairs and whose pavilion on top has become a favorite spot for all to sit and take in the water and air from the treetops.  The furniture in place, the cushions and pillows plumped, we ate a dinner of salad and pizza there on our last night to celebrate our many accomplishments this week.

It’s been a week.  A busy week. A week in this place we love and are called backed to every year. I’ve broken three nails past the quick, my lower back is iffy (to put it mildly), and I’ve eaten more junk than I normally would in any given week.  But it’s been worth it; we’ve gotten a lot done and, honestly, I’ve enjoyed every minute.  Because there’s something about being immersed in the inner-workings of the cottage and touching every surface and object here that deepens our commitment to it.  Emboldens our responsibility.  More than once, I have felt a presence and wondered which ancestor was joining me as I dusted the mantle, looked hard in the eyes of the pictures there, and made sure I was honoring and remembering those who have come before me.  Who have loved this place like I do.  (I wonder what pictures will remain of me – which future generation will look into my eyes in an old photograph?  Eyes that once saw and loved what they now see and cherish here.)

I’ve felt so often that our cottage is alive.  A living, breathing being that holds us and hears us.  That keeps us.  It has seen the best of us and the worst of us and through it all, it beckons to us year after year.  A part of our foundation, it is woven into the fiber of our beings.  The love and respect for this family cottage we all share, it is a privilege with which we have been bestowed.  It is a place where we were nurtured and given a firm sense of family and tradition.  How some can be called back year after year, while others find reasons to stay away – it’s not something I understand.  Because with every privilege, comes responsibility. Being here each summer, helping my mom open the cottage this past week, it makes me even more cognizant of the fact that the cottage is, and always will be, loved, cared for, fought over. That in our ancestors’ memory and honor, good stewards we strive to be. In their memory and honor, we try and do what is right and good. In their memory and honor, we try to be fair and fight the good fight.

It isn’t easy. It isn’t perfect. But it’s a labor of love. And we are all doing the best we know how.  No ill-intentions. No harsh judgments. Just giving of ourselves to that which has given so much to us and knowing that, perhaps, we have made a difference. Here. In the attention to detail we pay in our own lives. In our kids’.  For future generations to have and to cherish. 

It is a special place. It doesn’t bend to our will. It doesn’t change. It is what it is.

Everything to some. Unquestionably, everything to me.

A labor of love indeed.