Our Vacation, Part Four

The key to the cottage came with a check list of all the things we were supposed to do before we left at the end of the week. Basically it amounted to: "If it looks like you were ever here, you will loose your deposit". "Great." I thought.  "I'm going to get hung on this somehow..." But I had all the time in the world before I had to worry about it. A whole week, in fact.

It took a a few tries before the door would unlock. At first, I wasn't sure we had the right place. I had visions of us walking in on some unsuspecting family who would soon find out that we had no intention of leaving until the week was over. But this was the right place and once the door was open, we blew in and unpacked in a heartbeat. It felt a little strange to me at first. The cottage we used to stay at was less than a mile away. It was the real cottage to me- it had an almost "full" kitchen that was just a step or two above camping, two bedrooms-one of which housed three of the kids, the other one where Sam would sleep on an air mattress on the floor, a small living room (i.e.: the master bedroom) and, for better or worse, a small, centrally located bathroom. Basically- a real cottage.

This place was arguably bigger than our house. Granted that's not saying much, but still... It had a dining room that was large enough for a person to walk around the entire table. The kitchen had an actual dishwasher. There were three bedrooms which meant that for the first time in nearly twenty years, I wouldn't be spending the vacation sleeping on the living room floor. And best of all, in addition to the regular bathroom (which also was bigger than the one at home), there was a half bath off the master bedroom. This vacation was getting better by the minute.

We set up all of our stuff until it was a close approximation of home- except without the overwhelming clutter, then we ran a few quick errands. The rest of the time was spent having dinner and relaxing and making a to-do list for the week ahead, and making plans for later in the evening. Sam made himself comfortable and settled into a recliner to watch TV. Several games that were brought along were taken out and stacked in the living room- just in case we had the energy to play any of them when we got back

After dinner, we headed back out again in what had become our routine over the past years of vacations. The first stop was at the nearest Christmas Tree Shop. It was a short ride to get there and once we arrived, we all piled into the store, prepared to find all the stuff that had been waiting two years for us to buy. Strangely, this wasn't happening. I'm not sure what the problem was, but none of us were finding all that much of interest. In years past, it was difficult to fit all the shopping bags filled with the junk we bought into the van, but not this time. Try as we might, we were just not fulfilling our self-imposed quota of purchases. Why was this? Has the quality of their crap somehow diminished? This seemed unlikely, since this has never been a consideration before... and we have a house full of it for proof. Perhaps this was the problem. We already have everything they're selling packed into our tiny home. The appeal of buying double or triple (or more- in the case of candles) of what we already own, was not doing it for us. How strange. Perhaps when we stop at the other stores later in the week, we'll feel differently. For now, we left the store and headed to the beach.

The last outing of our first day has always been to go to the Windy Beach. This is not the real name of the beach, it's just the clever name we gave it years ago since it's always windy, and, it's a beach. We've never gone swimming there. We walk the beach and find shells amongst the seaweed and dead horseshoe crabs scattered along the shoreline. Helaina mostly goes after the toenail shells and Jake scours mostly for the scallop shells. Strangely, we seldom find rocks here, but there are other places to find those. Occasionally we fly kites, as Rachael did this year- with some effort.

I've always enjoyed taking pictures of the kids at this beach. In the evening, the low angle of the sun casts long, sharp shadows that contrast with the light- which is especially golden. The sunsets at the Mayflower beach may be more dramatic, but here, there is something both sad and comforting in the melancholy fading afternoon light that hints at the approach of autumn. It seems well suited to my nature.

As night filtered in, we headed back to the van where we would brush off our feet before the drive back to the cottage. The games we left out earlier would have to wait for another night.