Lake Days

If you've noticed there aren't quite as many posts happening right now, you are right.

We've been spending more time at the lake. "Gee, you're so lucky to have a lake house!" people say. And they are right.

But remember a lake house doesn't come with hotel amenities you might enjoy on vacation. No daily maid service to make the beds and clean the bathrooms. No call to housekeeping if you run out of clean towels. No restaurant downstairs when you're hungry.

No. When the lake house belongs to you, all of these things are your responsibility. Maintenance. Yard work. Plumbing problems. Dying refrigerator. Anything that needs to be done. And when it's an old house, something always needs work. So be careful what you wish for.

The other side of that coin is that you can spend time (after you've done your chores) on the water. Exploring the lake and watching the changes that happen from season to season. From year to year.

It's where we watch the cloud show in the sky. There is a spectacular fireworks display that will happen down the lake in a couple of weeks. But I'll take Mother Nature's brilliant cloud display over that. And there are stars at night. Take a blanket down to the pier. Lay back. Look up. 

The lake house gives us a place to gather. Over and over. Year after year. Family and friends. To make memories. To teach a child, and then a grandchild, how to fish, how to drive the boat. To sit under the porch fan and read a book or work a jigsaw puzzle. It's fun bound together with tradition.

It's a place to tell stories that begin with, "Do you remember when...?" Or, depending on the visitors (like those who hung out here during high school or college years,) "It's a good thing these walls can't talk!" There are so many memories bound up with this piece of property.

This lake house is the place where I met Daddy-O when we were in high school, back when there were only trees across the lake from us. (It was years later before we had our first date.) Now, after almost 40 years of marriage, it's where we sit together on the porch with morning coffee and watch the first fisherman float by.

So. Lots of work? Yes. A whole lot of work. I'm dressing in my oldest jeans and my least favorite T-shirt and heading out this morning, armed with a mop and Swiffers and a bucket and Pine-Sol. It's time to get things ready for our family week there in July. Would I want it any other way? No.