On my journey to full self-awareness, I am becoming more determined to acknowledge that what I feel is more important than what other people think I should feel. Every thought, every choice, every action brings with it a consequence, and as painful as each consequence might be, the choice is neither right nor wrong as it offers me the chance to more correctly align my character to my soul.

Cottage Memories

Those of us who have grown up rooted to a beautiful place have enjoyed a rare treasure. The treasure for me was an original rustic log cabin family cottage situated in a large glen in the Laurentian Mountains in the province of Quebec.

The log cabin grew over the years to a 4 bedroom structure with a huge kitchen and indoor plumbing, thanks to the hard work of my father who built our country retreat by hand, and to my mother who painted, decorated, and admirably maintained the family during the building process. But like most good things, there’s a cost attached and if you’ve ever struggled to say an unwanted final goodbye to a childhood summer cottage, you’ll know the emotions it evokes.

A lifetime of pleasant memories - the wind wafting through the pines and maples, raindrops pinging on the tin roof, the sounds of the running brook as you fell asleep or awoke to the quiet solitude - turn bittersweet when you know that there will not be any more. The human heart sinks roots into it’s home place - roots that don’t like to be cut, but the choices that have been made the past 2 years have meant that the cottage will not be part of my life anymore. That being said, however, it’s still a very big part of who I am - and that is the problem. The weekends and summers I spent at the cottage led me not only to an appreciation of nature but also to a lifelong connection to the memories of life shared as a family - through childhood, young adulthood, marriages, children, grandchildren and death. When my mother died - my father having predeceased her - the cottage was left to my 2 sisters and me and as such, belongs to all 3 of us, but that which brought us together all our lives has ironically torn us apart, in that each one of us has different needs and therefore different ideas about what to do with a cottage that is 600 kms and 8 hours away from Toronto, and is now in much need of constant repair and maintenance. These issues have been difficult, if not impossible, to reach agreement on, so, due to the limited time of summer availability, the long distance travel, and the financial constraints involved, the ultimate compromise has been the need for me to make a personal decision to sell my share of the cottage and surrounding property.

No matter how hard I try now to think of the cottage as simply a memory of my past, the emotional side worms it’s way in, as this was the place where attachments grew and persist way beyond what makes sense - at least that’s the way it is with me, but not necessarily so with my sisters, and for that reason I have come to realize that I must learn to grow away from what has been my favorite place. I have tried to convince myself that the good memories aren’t worth the chagrin and that I’d have been better off without ever having loved the cottage, as, if that were the case, I would never really have to say a sad goodbye. But it is not the reality,  and bidding goodbye is inevitable.

But - how can I complain - what it really all means is that I’ve enjoyed something enough to wish it could go on forever, and experienced something that’s good enough to enter into my good old days hall of fame. And I don’t suppose that I should want anything better than that.