Another insult to the injury of November is leaving the cottage for the season. Not that I am not less than miserable at the lake when the sleet starts sleeting, the dark starts creeping, and the water lines start freezing – oh, is that a poem coming on? Maybe not, but the load-out time has come and of course I have some things to say about it.
For those of you without seasonal residences, one of the most bizarre things is that the way you leave everything when you leave is (hopefully) the way it will be when you arrive to greet the new habitable season. That means if you leave an unwashed glass on the counter it will still be an unwashed glass mocking your lack of housekeeping skills six months from now. If you leave a book halfway read it will still be waiting for you in the spring, although at that point it will need to be all-the-way-from-the-beginning-read, which is not necessarily a bad thing. And if you leave a bag of potatoes under the sink you are on your own.
Although I aspire to be one of the jetsetters who simply keeps a wardrobe’s worth of clothes in each of their various houses, I have not perfected that yet. This might have to do with the need to own several iterations of outfits that can live independently and magically suit any occasion that might arise when I am unexpectedly in Cannes or Mustique, but I am only marginally capable of having enough clothes that can get me through a week without calling attention to the similarity of my ‘look’. So that’s why it is necessary to remember to repatriate the bathing suits and other summer wear that gets more wear at the cottage: to be able FedEx it to Mustique and back.
When the leaves fall they reveal a lot of stuff that you would rather not see. Most of this involves the yard work you wish you had done, or more correctly, you wish you had someone else to do. Although at the cottage it isn’t so much yard work as staving off the encroaching forest. In my own defence I must say I am a big fan of minimal staving, but I think I discovered at least three new invasive species of plant life this year. Anything that is still thriving and green in mid-November must be up to no good. At this point, I think I will let winter sort it out. If it shows up again in the spring, I’ll be looking for some DDT on Craigslist. After all, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
“Now the seats are all empty – let the roadies take the stage. The only time that seems too short is the time we get to play.”