when I was a kid, we would make the drive every summer from ottawa to our cottage on ahmic lake. it was a 5 hour drive, and we would pack up our lives for three weeks. this was our annual family holiday in august and the drive was long from our perspective. my mum and dad would stack up towels between my brother and i to give us our personal space; we would stop in renfrew for a snack and a break. at some point along the way, we would fall asleep (much to my parents relief), but before we did, we would shout, “wake me up at the windmill”.
the windmill was old and ramshackle – barely a windmill one might say – about a kilometer from the turnoff to our cottage on ahmic lake road. i have no idea if it ever was a working windmill. we loved to be woken up at the windmill. it meant we were this close to arriving at the cottage, that we were about to turn on to the unofficially named ‘bumpy road’.
arriving at the cottage along the bumpy road was like the beginning of summer on the last day of school. it was filled with possibility. days of building forts, reading with my best friend, creating diving shows, convincing my mom to take us waterskiing and roasting marshmallows. nothing bad ever happened at the cottage. when i think about my happiest memories and where i feel most safe and alive, i always picture the view from our dock.
so it was fitting when i arrived back in canada last week after my diagnosis, that my mom suggested we go up to the cottage for a few days. the cottage is good for dad, she said. he smiles more there. which makes it good for all of us.
but it is also good for me.
yesterday we rounded the bend and saw the windmill for the first time since last season. this time i was driving so i did not need to be woken up. i felt a sense of peace and calm; not the same sense of excitement i felt as a kid, but a sense of comfort and safety.
the windmill doesn’t look the same anymore. it has lost most of its staircase, it doesn’t turn, and i’m surprised it hasn’t fallen down on a windy day… it has weathered through the years. just like us.
now i sit in the hot sun, uncharacteristic for the last week in may, listening to the sound of the chimes hanging above the deck signaling the north wind. the wind is rustling through the trees. dad is off walking kahla. mom is planting geraniums in her planters (because what’s a cottage without manicured gardens?!).
we don’t have great connectivity here so I have no wifi: it means i write. i read. i go for walks. i sleep 9 hours a night. i still have cancer, and i’m still sad about it, but it doesn’t feel impossible to bear here.
nothing bad happens at the cottage.
*photo taken on an iPhone in summer 2015.
