COTTAGE DAZE - Shed a tear for the end of summer

View more by Jamie Ross

MUSKOKAN - I’m sitting in our new gazebo looking out over the water. The screened post and beam shelter that sits on a rocky knoll high above our swim rock is one of those cottage projects that we completed this summer. It is a beautiful view.
I look up the north arm of the lake; the water is choppy and angry. Gulls float on the breeze, and waves crash on shore. It is a wild day, blustery, but sunny and warm. It is such a day that would usually stir my senses, but today I’m feeling a little melancholy. It is the last weekend before school starts.
This is my least favourite time of year. I know that for many of you the worst time of year is mid-winter, when the days are short, bitterly cold and snowy. Myself, I hate the end of the cottage season, when the kids go back to school, and those fun summer days at the lake come to an end.
We are up at the cottage for one last summer weekend – but only one of our four kids is able to accompany us on this trip. Our son has hockey already, and grade nine orientation, as he is off to high school this year. Our second daughter is home working, and on orientation duty. So our youngest brings a friend, and my wife and I mope about.
Earlier in the week, I had driven through Algonquin Park on a grey, drizzly day. It is a drive I usually enjoy, cruising through the park and winding my way through the hardwood forests of the Madawaska Valley and pretty towns west of our Capital. Not on this day, however, as the sullen day matches my mood. I was on my way to Ottawa with my oldest daughter, taking her back to school. She is entering her second year at Algonquin College, studying broadcast journalism. I was helping her move into a tidy little condo with some friends
I spend two days helping her get organized, while enduring the agony of assembling some Scandinavian furniture for her room. It is from the same Swedish madman that designed my furniture way back when I had trotted off to university.
When her desk, bed and dressers were finished pretty much according to the directions, and she had some healthy food other than just pizza to begin her year, it was time to depart. I gave her a hug goodbye, and felt her tears on my shoulder.
I turned away and slipped my dark sunglasses on, as tough old father types are not supposed to cry. I told her, with my voice a bit shaky, to stay in touch, study hard and that I’d miss her, and then I jumped in the truck and was off, letting the salty tears flow down my cheeks as I escaped the city heat. I cried driving away, where nobody would see. I knew she would be fine, and I was happy that she still missed us when away.
I also liked the fact that I had gotten her settled, and that she had decorated her room with family photos, and pictures from the cottage.
There is one of her upside down in mid-air, about to land in the lake after a lost gunwale bobbing battle with her brother. There is a photo of her kayaking, one of her diving off swim rock, one carving through the water on a slalom ski, and another of her swimming in from the floating raft. The photos are blown up large and framed, and, I notice, in each photo she is smiling and laughing.
I am happy that, when she is feeling down and alone far away at school, she will be able to look at the photos, and remember those fun summer cottage days with the family and smile. And thinking about her off at school, smiling, makes me happy.
I imagine her out on the lake on this day, paddling her kayak through the swirling white-caps, whooping loudly and howling with laughter, and I feel better – sitting in a gazebo on my lake, my hair tossed by the wind.

James Ross is the author of the book Cottage Daze released April 2012 by Dundurn Press and available in your favourite bookstore. The book features the best of his cottage stories. Visit www.cotagedaze.com, email cottagedaze@vianet.ca, or follow @cottagedaze.

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