Home Away from Home

We meander through the familiar little borough, past the French pastry shop, along side the ice cream parlor, along the edge of the lake and up the hill to the cottage. Home.

The kids bound from the car, anxious to get Trinket settled, to choose their rooms and their beds, empty their suitcases and get the vacation underway. But each child helps to make several trips down the steps to the car and back up with a box or bag or trunk. And then while they explore the house and try to figure out what has changed since their last visit, I unpack and store all of the groceries. Breads and buns and bagels and bacon and burgers. Corn on the cob, coffee, crumb cake, cool pops. Salad greens, cereal, salsa, seltzer. We are fully stocked.

And in no mood to cook. Long day, long drive.  So we take a short walk through the streets and under the trees and make our way slowly to the pizza shop.

The kids chatter about this place and that, plans for Death By Chocolate at the ice cream parlor, things they want to buy at the odd little novelty shop, how many years in a row they have been coming here.

And I am consumed with other thoughts. I have come here with the kids at least once a year since the year I began my divorce. It has been mostly a place of peace, but there are some ghosts.

I made my first trip here when Charlotte and Jack were new parents and were renting a cottage for two weeks in July.  I had just gotten engaged to Lars. It rained the whole time we were here. I remember loving how lush and green it was. How pretty. How untouched by the hands of time. Lars and I visited a little shop that has since burned down. (And so have we, actually!) We bought a little hand carved wooden duck. We'd buy another some years later on our honeymoon in Greece. And a baby one for me to place next to them on the mantle to signify my first pregnancy. And another at a Christmas craft show when Hil was on her way. The little ducks would be our family thing. I don't know where the first two ducks are, but Hil and Pat still have the ones that represent them resting on the ledges above their bedroom doors.

I was so smitten with the place I'd wanted to move there. And by contrast I still remember Lars remarking that he'd never go back. He'd been bored. Why would anyone go there? There is nothing to DO! I should have turned and run then. That should have told me something.

And now, it is the litmus test. If you hate coming here, or even just tolerate it, we are not meant to be.

But in spite of the sirens and flashing warning lights, I married Lars, had children, and didn't come back until I divorced him.  And stayed with Charlotte and Jack. And after that first summer, when I began to come and escape more than once, I began to plan weeklong trips with the kids.  They would quickly learn about the culture of the place and come to love it. To crave it. It stood in stark contrast to the hype and excess of trips with their father.

The first adventure was not in Charlotte and Jack's cottage, remarkably. We'd rented one of the cute little places a few blocks away with four-poster beds and darling porch where we'd played Monopoly Junior in our pajamas to practice math skills on summer break. We started our traditions that summer.

And we had invited Mom.

What a long time ago it seems like now. 

I'd been dating J. by then. And our children had not met each other or each of us yet. My calls to him were secretive and placed after they'd gone to bed.

I can barely remember that first trip. It seems so foreign now. J. and Mom are no longer part of the happy memories. Just factual memories.

How far we've come. How long we've traveled.