“What’s on your heart?” I ask myself after writing three sentences and deleting every one of them.
The question is an invitation into a cave within myself, into the deeper bedrock underneath whatever I was trying to say before.
We bought a cabin.
Well… once upon a time it was a trailer that someone enclosed into a house. The kitchen sink drains into the yard, and beneath an old armoire, we found decades’ worth of cockroaches in varying degrees of decay.
Our initial offer wasn’t accepted, leaving me in an insecure limbo for half a day. The thought of losing it—this little lakefront piece of park-like land, next to a state park, within forty minutes of home, and at a price that didn’t break the bank—tipped us into submitting another offer.
It wasn’t until we spent the day there that the vision finally settled in.
We scrubbed windows, floors, carpets, and countertops. We hauled out bags of bug-filled bedding. We wandered down to the barely there dock, where an osprey chirped before landing high in a neighboring tree. (I’m crossing my fingers that’s where its nest is.) We played games.
Somewhere in all of that, the place became real.
Because my worry wasn’t really about this cabin, it was that this little spark I saw wasn’t actually possible.
Our last cabin—the record-spinning, fireplace-having, eight-minute walk to the Pacific Ocean cabin—grew into something far bigger than we ever imagined. A friend escaping an abusive relationship stayed there. Friends who couldn’t find campsites during COVID ended up staying there. Countless family members and friends came for little vacations, long weekends, campfires, games, and slow mornings.
That place became part of our story.
My fear, something I don’t think I fully understood until recently, is that I’m trying to recapture something that’s gone. That what I saw during our walkthrough was simply nostalgia wearing a new face. A fantasy that could never become reality because our old cabin—that sweet, sweet place—was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Which is true. And now… We have this.
Yesterday Dave ordered four life jackets and a paddle for the little boat the previous owner left behind. I felt something shift. I imagined us piled into that boat, an osprey circling overhead, a pair of swans gliding across the lake, and although it would never be the same as before, I realized it doesn’t have to be.
This place gets to become its own story. I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself.
But…Yeah.
I think it could be pretty cool
Love, Jaclynn
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