Old Age Day by Day July 6, 2010

My husband and I were up at our cabin for the 4th. We had pine needles to rake, cleaning to do and deck furniture to put out. But we still got some walking done, and sat out on the deck to eat and read. With two dogs, we don't canoe much any more, or swim as much either, as dogs can't be on the lake beach any more. Times have changed. I was sitting out when the overwhelming feeling hit me that most of my experience at the cabin, after 25 years, is over with. The good times behind me. It shocked me to have the thought, as I'm usually pretty forward thinking and not sentimental or regretful, but my mortality really hit me then. I examined the thought and found it to be true. My best times at the cabin are, generally speaking, behind me. It's a fact. That doesn't mean I won't have wonderful moments ahead, but that sense that all the kids and friends are around which made the cabin so special - the crowded party boat, the many towels hanging out on the deck railing, the big barbeques and dog birthday parties - these will not happen again. I still have my dear friend who rents the cabin next door for a week in summer, and she has a bustling crew, but I'm often alone or with the dogs. My kids rightly want to be up when I'm not up, they want to do their own thing, and friends have complicated schedules but not parallel ones, since are kids are all way grown.

It was a punch in the gut kind of letting go, and it took some time for me to acknowledge, with any degree of equanimity, what is so. The cabin is slipping out of our hands and into those of our children and grandchildren. There will always be a big piece of my heart up there, and I hope my family feels it when they're up. I bought the cabin outright with my father's life insurance payout when he died. I knew he would have loved it, especially the fishing. My mom, well, maybe she would have rather stayed at the Hilton, if there was one, which, thank goodness, there isn't. But she would have been happy embroidering on the deck or reading. I used to feel like I was extending their lives by living mine. Now I feel the extension stretching beyond me to my children and grandchildren. It's poignant, true, and quite a piercing adjustment, but one I'm attempting to make gracefully.