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| Not Actually the Bathroom |
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| first Arden morning |
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| dirty Arden face |
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| Sisters walking home after a little Arden tea party |
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| happy Arden day |
The family just returned from a week in
Arden and while a week feels long enough to sleep in sandy beds, deal
with temperamental and primitive plumbing and battle the vicious
horseflies, my heart is aching a little. Because every week in Arden
could be the last and because Arden is my heart. I have been going
there every summer since I was 2. My dad's ashes are scattered on
the Canadian Shield shore line, my parents got married there and I
exist because Arden exists. My grandmother swam races in that long
deep lake and met my grandfather on the very beach my kids scurried
across last week. Arden was once a fancy pants resort built in the
1930's and there was a tennis court and there was a dining room and
there was my grandmother, a poor abandoned girl from Toronto who was
working as a mother's helper. Someone lost an anchor in the lake and
my movie star beautiful grandma dove to the bottom of the lake to tie
the rope to pull the precious piece of metal back up. Because we
were smart then and didn't live in a world where things were
disposable. My grandpa heard about this pretty pretty girl and came
across the highway to meet her and they loved each other,
conditionally, for 58 years. Now there are just a smattering of
white falling down clapboard cottages circling a bay and connected by
little dirt roads.
I have walked barefoot on those dirt
roads for 35 years and my feet know those roads. They know where the
smooth stones are and where the ground is hollow when you stomp.
And I want with all my heart for my
kids to learn these things. To have adventures and catch frogs and
jump off the bridge and wonder if there might be a secret cave under
their own little feet. But the resort was divided up in the '70s and
is slowly being sold off and is becoming private, like everywhere
beautiful. There are only a handful of rental cottages left; and
they are for sale. Someone will buy them and they will become more
private space and we will lose Arden forever and my heart will break
a little bit. It will break again for my grandma, who lives in that
water. It will break again for my dad who lives in the buildings he
once maintained and it will break for my kids who will lose so much.
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| The little girls on "the log" |
Oh Arden, I know you...
