Summer House Part II

Water's Edge is where Summer House has been for nearly 100 years. It's the only way we could afford to have a house there now, real estate prices are way out of line with reality. Relations from long ago literally pitched tents there and prayed. Eventually they claimed the land as their own and the family home was built on that same plot of ground...that parcel of prayer.

Those ancestors are long dead, but many of their prayers are answered each year when family members converge on Summer House to share its quirks and comfort.

We call it Summer House, but improvements made over the years actually would allow it to be used year round. Occasionally some family member will spend a weekend there in the fall, but a winter's stay at Water's Edge takes far too much commitment. The fast striking lake effect snowstorms can easily turn a night around the fireplace into a month or more of isolation.

For years I had a fanciful mental dalliance of returning to Water's Edge in the winter deep to close in my thoughts...to read, to write, to make love. Until now the lurking fear of my response to isolation coupled with the cowardice provoked by everyday responsibilities always managed to cripple that dream.

This winter was different. I had danced with loneliness for months and now I was ready to take the relationship a step further. I was craving seclusion.

From Summer House you can look across the vast waters of Lake Erie and see the Johnson Island lighthouse, built by men held captive far from home. They were prisoners of a war within the borders of their own nation. The lighthouse is now merely a curiosity. It had been modified over the years, but eventually lost its usefulness. During the tourist season the bright lamps that once guided cargo vessels, warships and smugglers are occasionally set ablaze to give visitors another reason to linger in town until nightfall and spend their dollars.

Most of the men who built the lighthouse are buried nearby...but out of view. It's the rare tourist who treads their graves.

From the wraparound porch of Summer House you can also look across the waters and see another land-another nation with its own stories of hardships and horrors.

In the winter there is an odd dichotomy to that separation. The distance is still there, but by mid-winter the lake is frozen solid.







A man with enough fortitude, long johns, and a distinct lack of common sense could walk to that other land in the bitter cold. It had been done by some...and failed to be done by others.

I was headed to Summer House the day I passed the little girl with the bright red Mary Janes, a Popsicle stick and eyes that seemed to betray more than her age would allow. If I took my mind off the road, my thoughts could still easily be haunted by those eyes. It was silly.

Although many of my family members still gather there collectively each summer, I hadn't been to Water's Edge for several years. Having lost my wife to the unspeakable ravages of disease and medical admissions of helplessness, I had allowed family traditions to fray.

I was going back now for a reunion with fears un-faced, not family.

I had nothing but time...and a two lane road.