Rest for the Weary

Tomorrow, our family leaves for a much anticipated vacation to northern Wisconsin. I have been visiting my grandparents' summer cabin on Rest Lake since I was six months old, and am so excited to share this place with my own children. When I think about this place, every sense is evoked: the whisper of the trees and clinking wind chimes blown in the breeze, the pervasive aroma of bug repellent, the sun casting streaks of light across the lake as the sun sets late at night.

For mainly financial reasons, I haven't been up to visit since the summer of 2000; the summer my grandfather passed away. We were there for his funeral. That year, my senses were dulled. The trees weren't quite as tall that summer, and the lake was not as brilliant as I had remembered. My grandfather was the patriarch of our family; a jovial man who sang about "pistol packin' momma," loved Jesus, and tended to his garden with the precision of a scientific mind. In many ways, I looked to him as the father figure that I needed and yearned for. Summers on Rest Lake were beautiful because of him.

I think one of two things happen when you have been away from something for a while: it can become glorified to a kind mythic proportion, or you begin to see the thing as it really was. While he was alive, I idealized my grandfather. In his death, I see that though he was an amazing person, he was also human. He could be impatient, he showed partiality to certain grandchildren, and I don't think he was comfortable with my need for a father figure. I don't love him any less because of it.

In my absence from Rest Lake, I have grown up. I am now a wife, a mother and have learned to deal with my own humanity. I don't see the world in absolutes anymore (don't tell the fundamentalists), but in a world painted in slightly muted shades of their former colors. When we arrive tomorrow, I know that I am not returning to the same place I left behind, but I also know that Rest Lake will always be a magical place because the seeds of my childhood are planted there.