Cottage Daze Read Free Page A

world!”
    When we were young we would giggle at his antics. What a silly thing for a dad to be doing. In our teenage years we would roll our eyes and think, “How geeky!” As we grew older and visited the cottage with our friends, we would wince every time he stepped outside, and then let out a sigh of relief if nothing happened. Then, there it was, the shout. He seemed curiously incapable of being embarrassed, which was all right because I felt enough for both of us. Red-faced, I would cast an eye at my comrades for their reactions.
    In retrospect, though I might have thought his antics embarrassed me in front of my good friends, I don’t think his inane shouting from the cottage’s front porch elicited any such response from them. Perhaps their own fathers had similar unusual traits. Perhaps they had become hardened to such behaviour over time.
    When I started visiting the cottage with my own family, Grandpa would still wander out to the front porch and shout his greeting. The kids would giggle; what a funny thing for a grandpa to be doing. I was all right with it by then, too. In fact, his shouted greeting had become a part of the place, a part of what I felt at home and comfortable with and what made the cottage such a familiar and fun place to visit.
    Feel as if you can fly.
    We bought the cottage from my folks, and a funny thing happened. I would step outside in the evening, and I’d have this overpowering desire to shout to the world. At first I’d send out the familiar phrase in a hoarse whisper. Sometimes I’d yell it a little louder, much to my children’s chagrin and my wife’s displeasure. She’d give me that look: “See, you’re turning into your dad, you’re picking up all his silly habits. Do you want me to start acting like my mom?” Well, no, but that’s another whole column.
    We opened up the cottage on a beautiful weekend in April this year. We had made our way through the opening checklist, completed our chores, and then sat down for a nice steak dinner. We cleaned up afterwards, together, and then I stepped out on the porch, stretched, and couldn’t resist the urge … “Hello, world!” I shouted.
    My wife stepped out behind me, but rather than giving me heck, she gave me a little hug and said, “Yes, it’s great to be back here.”
    Looking back, I realize that my dad’s greeting, offered out to the lake, was simply a statement to anyone who was listening and to nobody in particular. My dad was saying, “I’m happy to be here!” Or perhaps, “I love this place!” After all, he never did it anywhere else. It was something only for the cottage. “Hello, world!”
    The Rescue
    First of all, before I begin this little story, I want to let it be known that I do not suffer from arachnophobia. I might prefer a snake slithering across my path, a leech stuck to my midsection, or even tripping over a hornets’ nest to having a big, hairy, creepy-crawling spider spinning me into a death cocoon, but, in general, spiders are all right.
    The Hobbses are good friends of ours. Even though they live over a mile away, they are our cottage neighbours. They have the small island called Blueberry to the northeast. If we ever need a hand, or advice, Harvey Hobbs is always willing.
    This April the lake ice took away the dock on Blueberry Island, making it extremely difficult for the Hobbses to land on their steep rock shoreline. The dock had simply disappeared, another victim of the destructive power of spring breakup. Here, then, was an opportunity for us to pay back the Hobbses for their unerring helpfulness. We set out on a morning mission in our boat to find the missing dock and return it to its rightful place. After some searching, we spied an intact, sixteen-foot section of the dock on an uninhabited stretch of the north shore.
    The dock was wedged high on the boulder-strewn beach. My wife and I