Upon a recent visit to visit Eric's family up north, we stopped by at Chesley Lake, a family campground that my family has been going to for over 40 years. Some of my family members still go every year, I have not cottaged there since I was a young teenager, and last time I popped by was over 2 years ago.This time around, with my own children and my cousins children racing around the lake front, my grandfathers sitting smiling under the shade of the tree, the golf carts rolling by, the sound of singing coming from the chapel, I had the overwhelming feeling of being at home. Along with the heavy bittersweetness of days gone by.
Over the course of my life I have moved more times than I can even stop to remember. With my family, on my own. I have been able to easily adapt to any surroundings (and climates!) and have never thought twice about it affecting me, for as they say, home is where your loved ones are.
While this is true, I never really realized the significance of a timeless, consistent place in my life. We spent 1 week every year of my life at Chesley Lake. And more than almost anywhere else, this place always brings such joy to me, such a feeling of relief and comfort. I instinctively want to run to the tuck shop and buy a mars bar (a personal tradition of mine), jump into a canoe and go fishing in the wee hours of the morning for rainbow fish, flop down on the couch at the cottage and read for the millionth time the Chesley Lake History book, feel the rush of wind on the swing-set, start hunting for my older cousins, sisters, and their friends to spy on, take a walk with my grandma to go visit someone she knows down the lane, stopping every once in awhile to eat a wild rasberry she shows me.
My personal secret favourite; read the last page of the books in the tuck shop that all end with a kiss, swim to the dock and jumpy off a million times, play t-ball and show all the boys that I've got what it takes to be on their team, laugh at my uncles antics and my grandpa's muttered puns, wake up to the smell of someone in the kitchen making coffee, and tiptoe over the mattresses of my sleeping cousins and siblings, because why sleep in when there's so much of nothing to do all day!?
Times that have come and gone. I have no regrets of having moved so much, in fact, I still feel it in me the thrill of change, and can't even imagine staying in one place for more than 10 years, and yes, no matter where we go it is our family and friends that make it home, but I think there is something necessary and profound about a place we feel at home. A place to reflect on wonderful memories, meanings and meanderings of life, the tough times, the consistency...
People and circumstances change. I won't hear my grandma and my cousin Heidi laughing on the porch again, even if I were to try and recreate the experience. Some family members have left, being replaced with new ones, some are new ones altogether, and altogether wonderful to see the tradition continue.
I don't have anything profound or life changing to close; only that I think I want to give my children a place like this, to help them remember who they are, what they're made of, where they've come from and what they've learned. In feeling this nostalgia, I am renewed to face forward again and carry on with my family and the adventures that await.
