I used to think I was the only one who had such mixed memories of many childhood experiences, but I suspect this is not the case.   I suspect that most of us who were careful observors even as young children saw amibiguity, complexity and even perverse paradoxes in many of our experiences.  For me, cottages are among those experiences. (I was reminded of this because my life partner and I just spent 24 hours at a a new cottage bought recently by some close friends.)

I grew up spending one month of every summer at a cottage, with my parents and my grand-parents.  My father would go to work (which was only a 20-minute drive away; those were the days!), and there would be me, my brother, my mother and my grandmother there. (My grandfather died when I was six, so most of my cottage memories don't include him.   Some notable exceptions were canoe rides with him, and swimming with me lying on his stomach, and him on his back, out really far into the lake.) 

Our days were pretty idyllic: we had to wait the requisite hour after meals to go swimming, and we also had to wait until the temperature climbed above 70 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade! before we could ask for supervision to go swimming.   I suspect, in retrospect, these rules were to give the adults some time in the cottage until at least one of them had to accompany us. As I remember it, we were in the water the entire time we were allowed to be, which probably amounted to six or seven hours a day.  That is a long time to sit and watch kids in the water!

We were expected to weed my grandmother's vegetable garden, after which we could buy these prepared cakes called Jos. Louis, still sold, though we called the Lulus, from the bakery truck that visited the cottages two or three afternoons a week.   There were also several very early morning outings to pick blueberries along the railroad tracks, before it got too hot; the reward was homemade blueberry pie for dessert for lunch.  (I still haven't figured out how my grandmother baked pies in a wood-burning stove and oven, but she did.)

Those were the happy cottage memories.  Even the month we weren't the official occupants at the cottage, we were welcome in the evenings and for the day on weekends.  The official occupants in the other month were my aunt and uncle and grandparents, and my cousin.  Since they lived just up the street from us in the city, we were all pretty accustomed to each other's company anyway, and probably spent most evenings and weekend days at the cottage, regardless of whose time it was.

The dark cottage memories continue to be somewhat of a mystery to me.  I recall vividly, though, when I was about eleven, just after my grandmother had died, that my parents were taking me to stay with my two great-aunts, who lived just about six cottages from my grandparents' cottage, which had somehow become my aunt and uncle's cottage after my grandmother died. (I'm sure in retrospect that my aunt and uncle bought my parents' share, since they undoubtedly had the money and my parents undoubtedly needed it.  Since my aunt and uncle are still living, I should ask them sometime.)   Anyway, I was to stay with these two great-aunts (who also lived on the same block as me in the city, so they weren't strangers to me).  My parents left me there, obviously distraught, and promised to return in a few hours on their way out of town for the week.  (I also don't remember where my brother was during this famous week.   But neither does he, so there you go.)

My great-aunts invited me to go for a swim with them, and I declined.  I sat in their cottage, which had this musty smell that I can evoke to this day.  I sat there, miserable, feeling completely trapped.  No way out, no choices, and not a place I wanted to be.  I was a pretty well-behaved child, but this was to be an important exception.  I told my great-aunts when they returned from swimming that I couldn't possibly stay with them for a week, and that I would go wait for my parents at the railroad crossing and tell them that.  I recall some protestations about how I would ruin my parents' week off, but I was determined.  Absolutely determined. 

As I walked to the crossing, I began to cry.  Even then, I don't think I knew why, and if I did, I have certainly forgotten now.  And I sat on the rock at the railroad crossing, where my parents would turn off the road to the cottage road, and wept, feeling more forlorn and empty than I had at any time of my life, except maybe when I found out that my grandpa had died.  This was the first of many times my parents were to face my unexplainable tears at inconvenient times.  In later years, they were more frustrated by them. This time, they came as such a surprise, that they weren't even angry, and didn't tell me how I was going to ruin their vacation.

I have no idea how they came to the solution: they took me to my aunt and uncle's cottage (until the previous summer, also "our" cottage in my mind), and arranged for me to spend the week with them.  I remember a barbeque (perhaps the first I'd ever had; perhaps barbeques in portable form were new then, I don't know), and corn on the cob, and horseback riding, and the greatest of all possible treats, being allowed to play games at the breakfast table with my cousin Cathy.  We played Chinese checkers. Faithfully.  Every morning.

I had a wonderful week.  But to this day, there are times when being at cottages (probably in part because I do not drive), I feel trapped.   Like I have no way out, and no choiced about where I am.  And when I get that feeling, that same smell wafts over me.  If it all covers some horrid trauma, it's buried to a point that many years in therapy haven't uncovered it.  Perhaps it's one of those quirks of childhood: I just knew it wasn't the place for me to be.  But I am grateful to this day to my parents for taking me at my word, knowing that I could not stay where they had arranged for me to be, and for coming up with such a wonderful alternative.  

Next entry

Archived entries