On the face of things, on a pure sensory level, our August is all lake and sandy feet, family time, dogs running in and out of the cottage. It’s farm stands and sunsets, wet towels draped over the backs of chairs, buzzing the beach in the Wrangler, playing wiffle ball in the yard. It’s the sound of bass and drums coming from the garage and also the low thrum of boat engines. It’s grilling corn and sausages in the carport, shielded from the rain. It’s reading novels in bed, going for walks in the fading light, sand on every surface.
One layer down beneath all that, August is the most nostalgic, memory-soaked month for me…this little town and this stretch of beach are the most constant thing in my life at this point, a magnet planted in my chest that pulls me back here over and over. It’s family life, distilled and purified. And it’s the natural world—wind, waves, deer, beach grass, stars--distilled and purified.
The driveway to the cottage is a long gravel one, and over the years people have suggested that we pave it—it wouldn’t be so noisy. It would look more polished, it would certainly be easier to plow in the winter. We never do pave it, though.
We don’t pave it because we love how the long gravel road forces you to slow down before you’ve even arrived. We love it because you can hear someone coming, even when you’re sitting on the porch watching the lake—the gravel announces a visitor, gives us a minute to come around the side of the cottage and wave them in, and when they step out of the car, they’ve already downshifted a notch, having been forced to slow down. That’s the point.
Our life here is small and quiet, intentionally so, and that means that besides family, the only people we see are old friends, and that’s a time-travel, too—these beloved friends I see only in August, depending on texts and Instagram updates the rest of the year. Their kids are taller and so are ours, and we catch up on all the things you miss across the distance—how are your parents? How’s that hard thing? Your skin looks great…tell me everything.
We settle right back into old stories and inside jokes, we watch the water and count heads when the kids are jumping the big waves, and we’re all right back to all those years ago, when the kids were babies or even before that, when we were.
Another layer down: earlier this week, the boys and I took the train to Chicago—Aaron was there for work, and he and William got tickets to see Green Day and Smashing Pumpkins at Wrigley Field (they don’t tell you that one of the great joys of parenting is when your kids want to go to the same concerts you do…Aaron was in his teenager-in-the-90s glory!). It was my job to get Will to Chicago, so the three of us got on an early train and spent the day in the city, then hooked up with Aaron, and Henry and I took the train back.
And OMG you want to talk about time travel? Chicago is a core memory on every block, around every corner. I forget that, I think, because we never lived in the city. But still, both for me as a child growing up in the Northwest suburbs and then as a parent raising kids in the Northwest suburbs, the amount of field trips, museum visits, weekend adventures to the city is basically infinity amount. The amount of Bulls games, Bears games, Cubs games, Hawks games. Every hotel pool—I can smell that fuggy over-chlorinated hotel pool smell even now. The Chagall windows at the Art Institute, the Enchanted Forest at Maggie Daley Park. Shows at the Vic, the Aragon, the Metro. The twinkly lights in the ceiling at the Italian Village, the way they run a knife around the edge of the bowl and tip out the steaming pot pie-pizzas at Chicago Pizza Oven Grinders.
On Tuesday, we went to the Bean, the Pritzker Pavilion, the Chicago Athletic Hotel. We went to the Cubs store and had lunch at Lou Malnati’s, and then the Chicago History Museum and Lincoln Park Zoo, and the whole day was like being in a time machine—so many rich and happy memories, both of my own childhood and my kids’ little kid years.
They teased me about how familiar everything was to me, how many memories and stories I was telling—oh, do you know that person over there, too? Who got married here? What about over there? Do you also know the person who owns this restaurant? Let me guess—are you close personal friends with Maggie Daley?
That’s what it is to be from somewhere, I guess—to have generations of stories and memories and relationships, a web of one million strands. I think I forgot how deep all that was in me. Henry and I rode the train back, exhausted and tender, and one of the most magical/weird/magical parts of the day was watching him get flooded with memories, too. We popped into the Chicago History Museum without remembering that he and I had been there together years ago on one of his elementary school fields trips.
Another twist of the kaleidoscope of this time-travel feeling: when we do go back to New York, we’ll go back to our apartment just long enough to pack it up and move to a new spot—so our current New York life is also kind of our past New York life, and what will be our new present is still in the realm of unknown future. Phew.
Also, tomorrow’s my birthday and next week is our wedding anniversary. I’ve got some major work news coming that’s being finalized literally as I type. Our boys are starting their senior and eight grade years, so we have a deep sense of the endings and transitions that are coming. Phew, again.
I’m sitting alone at the cottage, which is rare—it tends to be a sweet little circus around here, Vespa rides—the peppy little chug of its engine coming into the carport, the dogs announcing my dad’s or my brother’s arrival before even the grind of the gravel, lots of bike rides and stopovers to swim. But for a few hours here, it’s quiet and still and I’m watching the water, thinking about what a gift it is to have all these memories, what a gift it is to have lived so much life.
I’m grateful for Chicago and for the suburbs where I was born—for how the traffic report on WBBM (traffic on the 8s!) will always sound like a love song to me, how when I hear people talk about the Ryan and the Ike and the Kennedy, I know I’m home.
I’m grateful for all those city memories with our boys—the dinosaurs at the Field Museum and the Giacometti sculptures at the Art Institute. I’m grateful for this sacred stretch of beach where I’ve been watching the sun set for forty-eight years (tomorrow!) and I’m grateful to watch our boys walk down the same long gravel driveway shoulder to shoulder.
This is the gift (one of them, anyway) of getting older: you get to gather up and keep so many memories and moments and tastes and smells. You get to build a whole world inside your heart, and in there, for all time, you get to keep the smell of your babies’ necks and the sound of the Cubs game on WGN and feel of hot sand under your feet.
You get to keep the stars on clear nights, laying on our backs on the lawn, and the late-night giggles and the slow mornings, pie for breakfast. You get to keep Blue Moon ice cream and your brother playing catch with your boys out at the sandbar. You get to keep the sound of your mom’s voice, which increasingly sounds very much like your own, and the feel of corn silk between your fingers when you’re shucking a dozen ears on the cottage porch.
My heart is full-to-bursting with all the moments and memories of the life I’ve lived so far, and what a gift to get to make more—today and tomorrow and the next day. What a gift to get to keep living in this magical/terrible world! What a gift to hold in our hearts all the treasures of our past and let them soften us and tenderize us, give us wisdom and perspective on the days to come.
August is a time-traveler, and I’m a willing passenger, open-hearted and grateful beyond grateful for all of it.