Cottage - Issue 1

The Cottage Next Door - Issue 1

The Cottage Next Door                                   Issue 1

Vacationing at the Lake                                              By Charles R. Ratliff

Two years ago, my wife, Biz, and I decided to purchase a cottage at the lake. We love coming to Bass Lake; it’s become home to us. It’s also the place where many of my wife’s family live and visit, including her parents. Before buying the cottage, we were the occasional visitor – ones who visited, then went home, wherever that may have been.

Like the time when we visited before Becca was born. We arrived to find both of the spare bedrooms occupied. As we walked through the door, greeted by my wife’s parents, we got the “Oh, and by the way. . .”

“Your brother is in the blue room,” Mom told us five minutes after we walked through the door, “and your sister and her husband are in the upstairs bedroom.”

As Biz looked around her mom, her brother poked his head out the bedroom door, put his thumbs in both ears, and wiggled his fingers while sticking his tongue out at her.

He just got a job as an elementary school principal and after a year with kindergartners, spent the summer trying to shake some bad habits.

We were assigned the sleeper sofa on the porch.

Or, there was the time right after Becca was born. We arrived that summer, hoping beyond hope we would have the master apartment, aka the suite, upstairs, the one everyone fought over.

“We can’t stay in the blue room,” Biz told me during the flight to Indiana. “With a newborn, that room isn’t big enough!”

We walked through the door and . . .

“You guys will be sleeping in the blue room!” Mom exclaimed as she hugged the both of us.

Bizzy and I looked at each other in abject horror as Mom exclaimed that, once again, Biz’s sister and her family arrived, “just the day before!” and moved into the suite upstairs.

“You need to tell Leslie to move out!” Biz exclaimed. “We have a newborn!”

Mom calmed Biz down.

“I have the perfect solution!” she said, as she escorted us into the blue room. The single beds were pushed together to make one large bed and in the space at the foot of the bed sat a doll’s cradle, painted, and stuffed with a miniature mattress, a small pillow, and baby blankets. All that was left in the room was a foot-wide walkway in front of the dresser, which was usually blocked when the bedroom door was open, or when my wife had strewn the suitcases about looking for something to wear each morning.

We spent most of our time on the porch.

At night, when we did have to go to sleep, I would get the side of the bed next to the wall, while my wife slept on the side nearest the baby, and the door, so that she would get up with Becca, who was four months old at the time, and feed her, or change her diapers.

That first night, like clockwork, Becca began crying at two in the morning. My wife nudged me in the back, the one turned to her.

“Charles, Becca’s crying.” I snored a little louder.

“Charles -,”

“I hear,” I said, giving in. “Are you getting up?”

“I’m really tired,” she replied, “Can you see if she needs changing or a bottle?”

I crawled off the end of the bed, took two steps, and stubbed my two on the doll cradle. Along with Becca’s crying, and my howling, nobody in the house could sleep.

“Keep it down!” hissed my wife.

“I can’t. I think my toe’s broke!”

“Shake it off and change the baby’s diaper,” she hissed again. “And, keep quiet!”

We managed to come up with a system in which everybody was happy. I slept on the sleeper sofa on the porch. Becca learned to sleep through the night.

When vacation was over, we always headed home, whether it was back to Arizona, or to Plymouth when we first moved to Indiana, or, when we finally moved to Knox, the 4.4 miles up the road to our house, because we no longer needed to stay at the vacation lodge by the lake.

Buying the cottage was an excellent investment opportunity, one that helped move our lives toward the ultimate goal: Moving in next door to her parents so we never missed out on anything going on ever again.

For two years, we’ve been working on our cottage, getting it ready for more fulltime living, and less missing lake life.

It’s like my wife said as we stood on our shoreline admiring our new deck boardwalk we had just finished building last week. My wife mentioned putting deck chairs as close to the water as possible without actually going onto the pier.

“Right here,” Biz said, “I’m going to sit right here and grow old.”

We bought the cottage because investing in lake property seemed like sound financial planning on our part. There was, however a strong emotional and familial pull toward this particular purchase as well, much like when salmon swim upstream to their natural spawning grounds, to spawn their children upon returning home. We brought our child to Bass Lake, to spend her formative years tormenting, I mean, toodling, with the older family brood, and to become the next generation to live at the lake.

The cottage we purchased, as well as my wife’s parents cottage, were Kingsbury cottages brought in and set down on lots owned by my wife’s grandfather, a Chicago contractor who brought his family, among whom was a young daughter who spent her formative years growing up at the lake.

For years, my mother-in-law sat in her remodeled cottage, looking out at the lake, and felt like something was missing. Although having her family visit during the summer, and seeing all of her relatives, she would always look out at the cottage next door, seeing her own father’s handiwork, and could not help but feel like her heritage wore only one shoe, on the left foot, while the right shoe contained somebody else’s foot.

She was friendly with her neighbors, and they were good neighbors to have. The people who lived next door were grandparents themselves, from the north side of Chicago, who lived most of the summer in their cottage, riding the lake on their pontoon boat, and entertaining their grandchildren.

Then, the neighbor survived a nasty bout with Cancer. As the couple got older, their children visited less often. He and his wife decided to sell their cottage and stay closer to their family in Chicago.

He made us an offer we couldn’t refuse. And now, our family has a complete pair of cottage shoes, tied to feet that have made deep imprints into the muddy shores of the Bass Lake community.

My daughter, who just turned 9, now spends most of her days at Bass Lake, running between the cottages she calls home. We bought Becca a Schwinn bicycle, to ride and together we visit relatives, from the aunt down Elm Street, to the cousin down the shore.

There is no shortage of people to visit while at the lake.

And, when we decide it’s time to go home, we don’t have to go very far.

We just go through the gate to the cottage next door.