Labour Day Weekend
Sitting here in Avalon, looking at the pouring rain
Summertime has come and gone and everybody's home again
Closing down for the season, I found the last of the souvenirs
I can still taste the wedding cake and it's sweet after all these years
Since I was 12, I don't think I've ever gotten through one drive home from the cottage without purposely listening to that song, without staring longingly out the window as we pull out of Bristol, without getting heavy-hearted as we pass first the signs for Squam Lake and the On Golden Pond tours, then Ruggle's Mine - beautiful Bennington, Vermont flips it's meaning in my mind, it goes from being the quaint chunk of small-town America that tells me I am getting close to my most treasured place, to being a "now leaving paradise" landmark.
There is nothing so gut wrenching as leaving a desparately "summer place", a cottage town which thrives on "summer people", on one of the last days of August. No feeling is more meloncholy - I know it will be only a year until I return, but where will I be in a year? A WHOLE YEAR? On that drive home, THAT day, THAT is the farthest away I will ever be from my most beloved spot.
I will never know what it is that makes that chunk of the country so perfect for me, what makes that view and that beach and that feeling pull so strongly. It has been harder than ever this week to come back to the city, to the complexities of my life, to the noise and the people and the work. I don't know why it was so much harder this year, perhaps because we had as much family there as we'd had in years. I can hardly describe to you the peace that I felt, every single night, as I drifted off to sleep in my tent. The glow of a lantern off in the distance. The crickets, a pinecone falling off a tree, the breeze blowing a handful of water droplets onto the tarp above me. The calm that was so deep inside me, the calm of knowing everyone around me loved me and cared for me, and was only a moment away. It was like being a child again, feeling so protected and strengthened. This summer like never before, I wrapped my whole family around me and immersed myself in comfort and completedness. I slept the sleep of a better person. A person with no cares, even if for a brief time. It was heaven, and I woke up each morning rested and happy.
A week is never enough, before you can blink it is Wednesday, and then there are only two more days to do all that needs to be done. This cottage week seemed shorter than most. That Friday, that last day of sun - enjoying the sensation of that frigid water closing in on my incredibly stoned body, the extreme cold of it not unpleasant... just unique and unbelievably clean. Pushing up onto the waterlogged raft, drying too quickly in the hot sun, making the inevitable re-entry perfectly shocking and unpleasant in the most of ways. I wish the sun had never gone down. It was like my last day in Mexico, I could not stop looking at my watch, knowing the day was disappearing too fast. I floated around in the lake that Friday, growing increasingly more frightened to open my eyes - knowing each time I did the sun would be passing farther and farther over the changing hut, inevitably disappearing over that tall white pine, leaving the sand blue and cold again.
Being up there high was an incredible experience, I know now there are a million more places to see in that state of mind, a million more experiences to appreciate and indulge in. That cold lake - I don't know what to tell you. It was something, as well, to stand in that road - all shutting off our headlamps and realizing what a thing it was to be in total darkness, how rare that was for all of us now living in the city. What a big deal it was to suddenly be silent and hear only noises of nature and noises of the earth - no cars. No music, no fans or air circulating devices, or refrigerators, or toilets filling, or computers clicking their cooling systems on or off.
I couldn't tell you what it is that has given that place such an idylic spot in my mind. It's not just the view, or the property. It's perfection and comfort certainly is a lot of it. It's simplicity and lack of amenities forces me into my sweatpants and away from the internet and my real-self just comes flooding out in this rush of emotion. It's everything I need in the best way, and nothing more. It's the warmest, most comfortable bed under a gently glowing blue pool of light, with a cool breeze flowing through. It's the darkest night and the brightest morning. It's hot tea by a warm fire, snuggled close as close as one could get to the rainstorm and never getting wet. It's delicious meals when I needed them most, it's lake-water washed hair. My skin a million times better out of the smog. Spring water. The crummy old sign at the Italian Farmhouse, the accent on the girl at the hardware store, that parking in Plymouth is free, everywhere. That their bank has a walk-up window, that the used bookstore has been there for 20 years, that there is always some clueless teenager and no good liqcour at the Newfound Grocery. That we've never even tried to get a pizza delivered, that if you ask kids what they do for fun they talk about a swimming hole, the serious attendance rates at square dances, watching 250 motorcycles go by... all of it, every iota, even the stuff I bitch about while I'm there makes it this picture perfect retreat that lasts long into my dreams, lasts long into October.
It is the hardest place to be when summer ends. It is painful there to watch the days growing shorter, because it is in it's prime for me. It signals the end of my time with everyone I hold dear. It is the hottest it will be for a year, things will only get colder from here on in - for me, at least. It is still, even in adulthood, a return to work and business and routine. Everything will be harder soon. And I've been depressed about it all week. And all this weekend. I lay on the roof, staring for ages at the thick, lush, leafy maple trees blowing in the wind, glowing a beautiful warm glow in the hot sun. Thinking of how the sun would look, beating down on the ashphalt dock at wee-bit, or coming in those many panes of glass. Gently blowing the curtains at the head of that long dining table.
I miss all of you, so much. Already.
Only three-hundred and something days to go.