The blue flag is in bloom, a certain sign of Spring. The spring peepers sing their evensong to warmer weather. My bedding plants snug on the porch, await the arrival of Memorial Day, the demarcating date when I am fairly sure that the last frost has passed.
There is another sign that summer is nigh. It is the annual clean up, fix up of our camp in Borodino. I have opened our camp in Borodino for 23 years. The emphasis here is on the first person singular. We bought the cottage after a long search for a way to invest a small amount of savings in a creative way. Our lawyer advised: “They’re not making any more waterfront.” With that pithy piece of advice in mind, we traveled up and down the length of Skaneateles Lake, escorted by any number of realtors, through buildings that didn’t deserve the title. Some, shaky little crates with windows, were so close to falling down that I doubt that demolition would have taken more than a strong wind and a wish. Others were at the top of cliffs, with more than 100 rickety stairs to the water and I don’t do well with heights. But they were all within our general price range and the rusticity of our needs. We settled happily on a simple cottage close to the water, that had been jacked up, rewired and replumbed, as far as the simple plumbing system of a holding tank goes.
Over the years we’ve added decks, a dock and screens. We replaced a set of windows that was ready to fall out and had to try to stem the tide of gravity, water and the right-of-way road that, with heavy rain, becomes a river depositing itself over my poor little garden and filling the space under the cottage with gravel, too many times to count.
So, here it is – camp time again. I went out with bleach, Lysol, dusters and a vacuum, ready to handle what months of disuse by humans and intensive use by other life forms have left. I’ve tried about everything to dissuade the mice and others from making our summer cottage their winter playpen and birthing rooms, to no avail. I’ve tried mothballs. I put them in the drawers and under the cushions of the sofa in the Fall. I found them on the floor in the spring. I tried bait, designed to eliminate the pests with extreme prejudice. It went uneaten. I’ve used boxes of Bounce drier sheets, reputed to deter unwanted bugs, mysterious flying objects and mice. Mysterious flying objects have stayed away. The bugs and the mice didn’t get the memo.
Today I began in the bathroom, dusting, scrubbing and shining. Some would ask why and even I ask why – it’s a camp, after all. I moved on to the kitchen. I needed a sink filled with a bleach detergent solution to disinfect all of the cutlery, dishes, glassware, coffee pots, etc. which had been visited by Mrs. Brisby and her pals. (Mrs. Brisby is a character from the movie “The Secret of NIMH.”)
There I was, up to my elbows in hot water. Boats went by with revelers decidedly not focused on mouse poop. Laughter rang out from neighboring camps. I started to feel a bit like a superannuated Cinderella. I had three bedrooms, a living room and a porch to finish before the place was habitable.
It is always about the lake, though, and my work is merely preparation, an uninteresting first act to the headliner act of summer on the water.
The kitchen is clean. The bathroom is clean, and given the fact that it is probably the only room where anyone really has the time to inspect their surroundings, something that was pointed out to me by someone who lives in one of the far larger homes on the northern end of the lake, no one will notice my housekeeping shortfall.
I took a break. Poor me! I poured myself a diet drink, wishing there were something else available, and wandered out onto the deck to share vicariously in the hoopla of the holiday weekend. Tomorrow on the Ferro calendar is “dock day,” a day when family and friends gather to place the dock and the moorings where they belong, a day when I hear once again how many four-letter words these people know.
The frigid lake will set the tone. No one will be looking at the bedrooms. They will be cold and hungry. I put all of the cleaning supplies away and headed back to Marcellus to prepare something that will take their minds off my unfinished work. I’ll start with tiny hamburgers on soft homemade rolls, hot dogs with all the fixings, potato salad, baked beans and, satiated with all of that, I will cloud their minds with a rhubarb strawberry pie and hot coffee.
I wrote the above piece in 2013. The years have passed so quickly. The need to open camp has not changed. I have. This time, advancing decrepitude has modified the protocols. Now it is my daughter, Emily, who wields the female force for clean at camp while I putter away at things I can still do, making nostalgic comments that go unheard amidst the sound of the vacuum and earphones connected to an Audible account. Once the little girl who slept comfortably in the top bunk, now my Emily captains the opening of summer. It’s her youngest son now who sleeps in that bunk. Time has inexorably revised what is done.
And the lake has been a witness to these changes. It keeps these confidences as it sings its siren song of summertime ease with no need to mention the succession of who prepares for the season. In late May, for me, it was housekeeping, but ultimately it is always about the lake. We who are the acolytes eventually come to know this.
