The Last Week...Already!

 There are things we do up here that we never do at home!  There are things we can't do, things we don't have to do, things we don't have the opportunity to do, things we don't need to do and things we wish we could do.  Last week, as we moved probably the 12th and 13th mattresses of the summer I just had to laugh!  There would never be a 3 month period in my "real" life that I would have moved 13 mattresses!  It just happens to be the summer of the mattress!  In the farmhouse alone we have moved 6 mattresses this summer.  We have a lot of mattresses...plus the new one, which meant a bit of shuffling.  In the cottage we moved in a new one, moved the old one to another bed and moved that one to the curb.  We also helped friend(s) move 4 mattresses.  It was a 13 mattress summer!  We are all sleeping very soundly now...from moving so many mattresses!  Unfortunately, my back is paying for moving so many mattresses.  If it's not one thing, it's another!

One of many this summer.

Back home, at night, we have dinner and then usually watch tv.  We used to go out occasionally...pre 2020, then we just stayed home and watched tv or stared at some other screen.  Up here, we don't watch tv.  We go out!  We go out to other cottages and play games or just chat.  If we stay home we are busy watching the sunset, which for most of the summer comes late and lasts a long time.  Then we sit in the sunroom and talk.  Sometimes we play cribbage while watching the sunset.  Other nights, I catch up on my social media...because I don't do much of that during the day.  I have not watched a show in months!  Not complaining either, but don't ask me about anything on Netflix!  I don't know.  

Netflix North

At home, we go out to dinner at least once a week and sometimes more often.  In the two and a half months I have been up here, I have eaten dinner at a restaurant three times and had lunch out once.  I have however,  cooked A LOT!  I might cook more at home if I had a huge garden out of my backdoor that produced mass quantities of food.  Having so much produce is daunting at times.  Dinner usually consists of whatever was picked that day or whatever is giving us an over abundance.  Tonight we had stuffed peppers, because we had a lot of peppers!  I must say the garden really spoils us, when we go home and bite into produce from the store that is weeks old instead of minutes old we can't help but be very disappointed.  We also have dinner at other cottages.  Communal eating is very common up here!  When our extended families are here, in the busy part of the summer, we ate dinner with our kids and their families every night, as do many other extended families.  Once our kids and their kids leave, the cousins pass the baton for cooking and cleaning until everyone has had their turn.  This is one of the many things I love this about this place.  Maybe I should have lived in a commune.  

TJ, the great provider, in his happy place!

When was the last time you had dinner at home and then decided to just drop in on a friend or a neighbor?  At 8:30 at night.  It happens all the time up here.  I love it when people just show up to visit after dinner and I love it when we are welcomed to do the same!  I am starting to realize this is mostly a summer phenomena, as the days get shorter and the crowd is dwindling, drop-ins and drop-byes are less frequent.  The darkness seems to already be keeping us inside.  

Darkness...let's just consider darkness.  Our dark sky allows us to see so many more stars than ever possible at home.  Again, instead of tv, the night sky provides me with visual entertainment.  I have had a good time experimenting with night photography.  Although for every 10 photos I have taken, I have about one keeper, thank goodness for digital photography!  

Billions and billions of stars!

And that one in a thousand photo!

While there is so much I love about this place there is a lot I love and miss back home.  About this time every year, I watch the sun set farther and farther to the south and my inner migratory soul tells me it is time to go "home".  TJ does not have as strong a pull to home as I do and so he will continue to live his retirement dream and stay a little bit longer.  I will enjoy everything I love about this place for one more week and then this bird will fly south.  The summer was a real treat!  It was full of exactly what we love about summer up here.  We were back...and it felt right!  There were children who experienced the shore for the first time ever and I think they loved it!  To see the love of the shore passed on the yet another generation is heartwarming!  Our grandparents passed the love of this place on to our parents and them to us and we have continued the tradition and I sincerely hope some of them are the ones to pass it all on again!  

I will miss this serene view on my daily walk!

With only 3 more days up here and countless tasks to check off the "to do" list before I go, I decided to mindfully enjoy the day as much as possible.  I won't be walking along this country road with a view of the water for 9 more months, so I took an extra long walk today and soaked it all in.  I won't have those super fresh vegetables for much longer so tonight we had squash, potatoes, peas and tomatoes, all from the garden.  I won't have my favorite room in the world, my sunroom, for much longer so every time I sat down today I made sure to do it in here.  I wonder if everyone experiences this last melancholy week.  My head says to enjoy it for as long as I can but my heart already aches.  "Parting is such sweet sorrow", said some famous British chap.  How can one enjoy what they have and still feel a bit of sadness?  We say goodbye to another summer at the shore.  A summer that is now a unique part of history.  While it did feel "normal", it wasn't quite there yet.  There were still people we missed who couldn't make it up this year for one reason or another.  Seems there is always a slightly different crowd every year.  This isn't the easiest place to get to, which means everyone can't come every year.  Each year is unique in some ways and the same in many ways, which is part of its allure.  Au revoir, arrivederci, adios, so long, farewell...until we meet again.

These are a few of my favorite things....

Goodbye fresh bounty!

Goodbye beautiful flower boxes

Goodbye scenic drive from Pugwash

Goodbye cousins!

 

Goodbye sandbar walks

Goodbye perfect beach days

Goodbye farmhouse

Goodbye Canada

And Just Like That

 The last time I slept in my house alone was on June 17th.  Since then my life, and house, have been filled with one and then 3 more and then 3 more and then one more and then 3 more, until dinner on August 2nd, when we had all four kids and 5/6 grandchildren at the dinner table!  The hoops that had to be jumped through for this happen were not insignificant.  Turns out this is not an easy place to get to, especially this summer.  Beginning on August 3rd, the house started to empty slowly and steadily until a couple of weeks ago, when TJ headed to Cape Breton and I was alone in my own house for the first time in 7 1/2 weeks.  This may not seem like a big deal to many of you, but as one tired but happy Gigi, Mom and wife...I embraced this time.  My battery needed some serious recharging. 

The first time in 5 years all 4 kids have been at the shore...at the same time.
It was a brief overlap, but it happened!

Seems a theme of the summer, for my peer group, has been living life as a member of the "sandwich generation".  Many of us still have living parents, some were here this summer, but lately fewer and fewer are able to make the trip.  While I am not the caretaker of my mother, I do think about her daily and there is that constant concern...albeit from afar.  Many of my peer group have much closer and "hands on" experiences with their parents.  We also have grown kids who are married and now have families of their own.  One of the reasons we shared this special place with our families is that we hoped some day they too would share it with their children.  And now they have!  What this translates into as far as shore life is we find ourselves being pulled in many directions.  As if shore life didn't offer enough directions to be pulled in already!

One of the results of having our families here though is that for part of the summer, we are busier than a person should be...on vacation.  Of course, at this point, those of us who spend months up here can hardly be considered "on vacation".  We are just living life in a different location. (more on that subject in a later post) In the early weeks, we spend time with our friends and relatives for dinner and sit on the beach or porches at night and enjoy the quiet easy life.  Once our families arrive, we all retreat to our own family vortexes.  Our time is spent enjoying the days and nights with our kids and grandchildren.  There just aren't enough hours in the day or energy to venture too far from the immediate family, especially when you only get to be with your immediate family two or three times a year!  These are precious moments!  Still, I can't help but want to hang out with everyone on the beach!  We do have fleeting moments spent catching up with various people along the beach, but really when family is here, we are doing family time, as are all the other families.

So, when I found myself in my house, alone, with all the time I needed or wanted to go and make those outside connections, I retreated inside for a day or two instead.  I just needed to let the dust settle (sweep it all up) and first connect with myself before I connected with anyone else.  Transitions.  Sometimes they take a day or two.  Now we are back to the slower, steadier, part of the summer where hanging out with my cousins and our shore friends is routine.  The summer definitely has several stages, as I have said before.

Lately, with the sun moving slowly across the horizon and the days getting noticeably shorter I find myself wondering how it all went by so fast!  I am overwhelmingly thankful for the gift of being able to spend months up here again after one year away and last year only being here for a comparatively short time.  It feels like "normal"!  I have been able to see the many colors of the wildflowers from the purples and pinks of the lupins in June, to the hot pink flames of the fireweed in July to the white Queen Anne's Lace and now the yellow ragweed and gold wheat fields.  Summer is brief and glorious up here!  

June

July into August

July

August

August...a hint of fall is in the air by now.

The pattern of life at the shore follows the seasons.  Early summer when nature is still waking up, the population gradually grows as well.  Once July hits and summer is in full bloom, the sun shines from 5 a.m. until 10 p.m. the shore crowd grows to maximum capacity and life is crammed full.  In August, as the sun moves slowly across the horizon and daylight hours begin to shorten, people start to go back home to their real lives and the beach crowd gets older...because all the families with kids have to leave for school.  I have missed this visible transition over the last couple of years.  Seasons don't change as dramatically in the south.  Life mimicking nature makes me feel very connected...possibly one of the things I love the most about this place. 

I still have high hopes of writing more, once I find myself with hours of time to spare.  Fat chance!  The ideas are there, plenty of photos to back up those ideas too.  Inevitably doing other things and actually living the life I write about takes priority.  There will be time...someday.   For now I will just keep enjoying nature and watching the colors change.

June 2022
About as far over the water as we get to see.

July 2022, the sun is making its move to the left over the land.

August 2022
Moving farther and farther along the horizon....

One more sign of time marching on.....the garden!

June 2022 garden of possibilities

July garden is starting to pop

August garden!  We need more people to help eat!

I just love this!

And just like that, only 3 more weeks left up here.  It happens every time!  Enjoy these final few days of summer, we certainly will!

The Next Stage

 Celebrating a significant (at least to me) birthday recently, plus my mother moving to an assisted living home, has really thrown me for a loop.  Most of the time it is easy for me to ignore my age, I am only as old as I feel and most days, until recently, I feel pretty good=young.  I didn't have to deal with daily reminders of my numeric age until I had to sign up for Medicare and renew my 10 year old driver's license in June.  Now, every time I open my wallet I see 65 year old Lisa staring back at me instead of 55 year old Lisa, who was very tan, a bit thinner with fewer "experience" lines and chins.  My new photo, thanks to the new technology, is many shades of gray and makes me look like a faded version of myself which only serves to remind me that maybe I am becoming a faded version of myself.  "Damn, I hate you, new driver's license!"  Add to this the almost daily mail I now receive from Social Security and I am finding it harder and harder to deny my age, try as I may.

All of my peers have either lost their parents or if they are still alive, are now dealing with care for them in one sense or another.  As our parents get closer to the end of life it makes us also come face to face with our own mortality.  Not trying to be morbid here, it is a fact of life.  For so much of our lives, if  we are healthy and barring any tragedies, the natural end of life seems in the distant future.  For me, I never gave it too much consideration until recently.  A few things have moved it forward in my consciousness.  First, the death of my father, second my mother's health and her recent move and lastly, coming to the shore this year and realizing my generation has moved up in the pecking order of the circle of life.  

One of the blessings of the shore is the presence of several generations every summer.  Currently, I can count 4, maybe more, generations being represented here.  We grew up spending our summers surrounded by people of all ages.  It is part of what makes this place so special.  Our lives back home are not usually spent with such a broad spectrum of people.  We tend to spend most of our time with people in our same stage of life with the occasional visit from a grandparent or an aunt or uncle.  This summer, I am noticing there are fewer and fewer of my parent's generation showing up at the shore and it is eye opening.  For the last 20 years those aunts and uncles have been staples here at the shore.  They were our foundation in this place, the reason we all love this place and return year after year is because they loved this place and brought us year after year.  They started some of the very traditions that we love so much!  We have passed this down to our children and now some of them are passing it along to their children.  Suddenly, we have become the older aunts and uncles....YIKES!  

Being one of the "older" aunts and uncles is a blessing and a curse.  A curse...because obviously we are the next to "age out"....but not for a long time!  The good news is that currently, the blessings outweigh the curses.  The blessings are that we now have the freedom to spend months at a time here and don't have to rely on a few vacation weeks.  Every week is suddenly a vacation!  Being at the younger end of the older generation gives us many years to enjoy our new role.  I consider that my parents enjoyed 20 years of summers with their siblings and cousins at the shore after my dad retired.  If I think about how long 20 years really is, I have a long time to enjoy this phase of life! Another blessing is being able to watch as the next generations pass through some of the next phases.  

Rainy days at the shore mean different things to different ages!

There is lot of perspective that can be gained as we get older.  For example, rainy days.  As a child, rainy days up here were spent playing countless card games, tromping around in the rain wearing our boots and raincoats, driving our parents crazy because we were bored.  As young adults and teenagers we spent many a rainy day sleeping in, playing cards or games, and socializing, eating plenty of junk food.  As a young parent of children, rainy days felt endless.  Stuck in the small cottage, feeling alone and isolated with restless children thinking of ways to keep them entertained and not go nuts in the process.  Dealing with wet clothes and enduring a noise level that would have benefitted by the invention of noise cancelling headphones!   Add to the mix the teenagers who seemed to consume all of the food in the building and rainy days were never my favorite.  But I was a lot younger...so there was that!  As the nest emptied rainy days provided me with a much needed "day off".  A day off from the sun on the beach, a day off to read, a day off to do things around the house and catch up.  A day to sit and visit people one on one.  A good rainy day has also resulted in the writing of more than one memorable skits over the years. Retirement rainy days mean a restless husband instead of restless children! (almost the same thing, only slightly quieter). 

The point is, as I sit here on this rainy day, I think back to the many stages of my life up here and realize maybe the grass wasn't greener on the other side, maybe it was all green...just different shades of green that I  didn't see yet.  So, I will try to embrace this new stage of life at the shore and make the very most of the next 20 years, even if my driver's license does look like some old lady with a double chin.