If you have ever been to a summer cottage or cabin, you know the feeling of getting away and escaping life. Family summer homes are places that bring out the best and worst in families. Reading The Big House by George Howe Colt felt like I was reading a chapter from my own life. Having spent many summers in my in-laws run-down, mouse-infested cottage in Northern Michigan, I immediately fell more in love with it than any place in the world. I enjoyed weeks of summer fun with my kids up there as they learned to swim and play tennis, we walked in the rain, picked and jammed raspberries and spent hours playing board games. We had lots of summers in Michigan but it was always the cottage that made me feel like I was home and had found my soul.
When I say it was run-down, I really mean it. It was neglected for years. It languished during the winters, and each summer there would be a new problem with the structure. As we slept at night, mice would run through the house and take up residence in the fireplace wood, in the rafters or a corner that hadn't been noticed in awhile. Once during the winter a determined mouse burrowed into our mattress and died in there. First order of business that summer was to buy a new mattress. The smell of the place was so distinct that the musty order stayed in my clothes long after we returned to suburbia and the hectic pace of our everyday lives. It was a smell that I adored, so I didn't wash my clothes right away after returning home.
When storms would come rolling in off Lake Michigan, we would sit on the porch and watch as the trees would bend from the force of the wind, the thunder would deafen us, and pools of water would gather at the end of the road. The sound of rain pounding on the roof was extraordinary because there was no ceiling of insulation to mute the sound. It was wonderful to lay in bed at night and listen to nature come down around us. And every couple of years a hoot owl would take up residence in a nearby 100-foot tree and call out in the dark of the night, "Who, Whoo, Who-Who."
I know my children have fond memories of their summer life in the family cottage. My kids are 5th generation in the cottage that was named Tynneycoed by their great-grandparents. Their grandmother grew up in it, and always maintained she hated the place, which was something we couldn't fathom (and didn't really believe). My kids were very fortunate to be able to spend so much time having care-free fun summers -- summers without electronics, returning us to the "good 'ole days" when we sat at the dinner table eating summer cuisine and talked. One summer we watched a caterpillar turn into a chrysalis right in front of our eyes as we ate our tuna noodle casserole. About 10 days later that chrysalis burst forth into the world as a Monarch butterfly as we ate grilled cheese sandwiches. It was the love and kindness of my in-laws that gave us that gift each summer -- a sacrifice that was not lost on us, and that we were so grateful to receive.
As the years have gone on, and the cottage was falling in around itself, we used to dream of fixing it up, enlarging it and creating a summer home where the whole family could come together to enjoy each other's company. There are five siblings in the family, so the dreams we had were grand, but that was our dream, not necessarily the rest of the family's.
Of course the question of what to do with a cottage that has been in the family for 5 generations when it is time to pass it on is a sticky issue. As George Howe Colt so eloquently writes, "It's a very complex issue because there is so much emotion and family history involved. What one member of the family wants, some other family member doesn't. Where one person has a terrible memory of the place, someone else has wonderful memories." That was so true for our cottage and family.
So what to do with a family cottage when the current generation doesn't want it or can't afford to keep it? What to do when the family dynamics change, marriages end, and children grow up?
The family cottage I spent 20 years raising my children in is no longer readily available to me because I divorced my husband. My kids now visit the cottage as adults; my older son now shares the cottage with his wife. Every couple of years my ex extends me a generous kindness and lets me go back up with my youngest son. In the meantime my friends in Michigan tell me the cottage looks sad and forlorn because we are not in it. Where the lights in the cottage at night brought the cottage to life in the deep woods, now it sits dark and empty most of the summer.
As timeless as The Big House is, it was the summer of 2005 when I read it. I was sitting on the screened-in porch of the cottage, listening to the sounds of the night -- critters rustling in the leaves as they passed by, people talking far away, the occasional owl hoot -- and I instinctively knew that my summers there were going to come to an end. I felt the same heaviness in my heart that Colt felt in his heart when he decided to sell his summer home. It truly is like mourning a family member when you say goodbye to a house that you love; you're left with the feeling that you will miss her immensely, but you're grateful for every moment you spent together. The memories of our family cottage will live on in my heart, even when the time comes that I never see her again.
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