
When I was a kid, my grandparents owned a lake cabin. Some of my earliest memories take place there.
I remember the quiet mornings on the front porch in the delicate rays of sunlight. The air still gripped in the chill from the night. The sparkle on the water’s surface like a million stars. Towels drying on the railings from the day before, my collection of only the best rocks displayed on the tiled floor. I would collect buckets of them.
Our cabin was small, the smallest by far, and there where sometimes hornets in the upstairs bedroom. We once had to chase a bat from the living room.
But I loved it. I would sit by the front window and watch the squirrels nibble at the peanuts we would leave for them on the picnic table. They would stare at me through the glass with wary eyes as they ate, and I would wish I could tell them I wouldn’t hurt them.
The rocky beach of Ponderay was my world, playing in the pond we made from the lowering tide. I would pick daisies and set them in the water, watching the waves from jet skis and boats take them farther and farther out.
Some of my best days started and ended with daises on the lake.
The smells of pollen and freshwater, catching little fish by the dock with nets and perseverance, only to let them go again. The trees seemed so big back then. Huge pines and firs, oaks and fruiting cherry trees with bright bunches of bings and reiners. Little patches of thimbleberries that fit perfectly on my small thumb. Looking up at the dappled light that cuts through the canopy of branches is still one of my
One time while walking with my mom and brother, we looked through a thicket of trees and met the eyes of a large, white-tailed buck. He bounded away through the woods and down the dirt road with speed and agility that could kill. We were lucky his family was not near.
There’s something about the lakeside world that makes me wish time would come to a standstill.
When the sun would at last slip behind the skyline, we would build a fire on the beach and roast marshmallows over the dancing flames. Laughing, worn out from the day’s heat, we would have smores and cough on the sweet-smelling smoke that meant summer.
Looking back on those days brings bittersweet nostalgia into my heart.
Everything good and real comes to an end too quickly. When my grandparents had to sell the cabin, and it was bulldozed, I tried not to think about it. I tried to push those memories away to protect myself.
I’m so glad I wasn’t successful. Even if things end, that doesn’t mean you should forget. Even if it hurts now, that doesn’t mean it’s not worth remembering.
What are your most dear childhood memories? Why do you remember them? I think those are questions that we should all answer now and again, to remember our roots, and what makes the deepest impressions on our minds.