For the Cottage, . .

Every summer, my parents graciously let us use their cottage for a week, sometimes for even longer. We have had this piece of paradise since I was sixteen years old. I love it. It has been through it share of renovations lately and apparently now has a new ceiling. There was a time when walking up the rickety stairs would cause the whole cottage to shake and we often joked that one day we would wake up in the lake. It has a shower, but no toilet so it's an outhouse. That is probably the worst part of it. It's on Otter Lake, a beautiful long lake that often has speed boaters flying down.

It was at the cottage where my first paragraphs of my novel came to me so quickly. It is amazing to experience the cottage and the lake at Thanksgiving when the trees are dancing in their beautiful robes. It's also the place where I first knew that Gil was the one for me. It is because of the cottage and Gil fixing the water pump for my parents that they decided he was the one for me. It was the cottage where me and my collage friends often spent time sunning ourselves and enjoying the peace and quiet. We would bond over swimming, canoeing and Dutch Blitz, not to mention painting Gil's toe nails when he fell asleep, fun boat rides - that was Deb's favorite. It also has been the place of many adventures, Deb and Gil trying to cross over in the middle of a tornado and ending up in the lake clinging to the canoe, it was the first stop on my honeymoon when I didn't realize the scourge of of the black flies, and ended up with 43 black fly bites. That was our shortest trip to the cottage. Then there was the fun of going up with Jessica when we would all go up for a vacation, and lately it has become a safe haven in the summer for Gil and I. We disappear up there when the kids are in camp, I swim the lake and we both sit and catch up on all our reading.

There are no phones at our cottage, and no roads. We cross over by boat, and as a result it is very quiet and very peaceful (except for the speeding boats). It's the place where Gil and I reconnect and where I can reconnect with Nature. I feel very blessed that we have the place to go to, and that every year I get a chance to look forward to our time at the Cottage. Already as it is freezing outside I am looking forward to my time at the Cottage again this year, my time with Gil when we can just bask in the sun and get away for one short week. That's the only problem with the cottage, the weeks always seem too short.