It seems appropriate and symbolic even that I was the first one in and the last one out of the lake house for the final time. I was the first grandchild to come to this place... I am the oldest...and I was the last grandchild to leave. I have been a witness to ALL of the eras of this place. In addition, I have always been the designated responsible one. The dependable one. The one you can count on. The one who was supposed to set an example for the others. That hasn't changed. So I stride forward and lead the way into a new era.
I remember with great clarity when the property was owned by my great-grandparents. I remember their store and their home. I knew them. I have personal memories of them in that place. I can walk around their house and store in my mind. The kitchen, the living room with the davenport, the glassed in porch, and the Christmas tree with bubbling lights. I remember their bathroom and the back bedroom. I remember the other bedroom and the steep staircase that went upstairs to the bedroom where my grandma and her sisters slept as young girls. I remember walking in the entrance and knowing that if you turned right you went into the store and if you turned left you went into their home. I still remember how the store smelled. I remember how their kitchen smelled. I went for walks with my great-grandparents and fed the birds with them. I sat on my grandpa's lap and ate bugles and combed his three hairs. I remember walking over from Lilac Lodge for pop, candy, ice cream bars, and popsicles. I remember getting the tiniest little brown bag of candy to eat in the car when we would drive home. My great-grandparents taught me to tie my shoes in their kitchen. I loved them and I knew them and I remember the lake with them there. I remember thinking after they died (which shook my world) that the lake wouldn't be the same without them there. It wasn't. It evolved.
I remember when Lilac Lodge was shared by my grandma with her sisters and their families. I remember being elated after learning that our family inherited Lilac Lodge rather than the store or Pine Knot after both of my great-grandparents passed away. I remember being really worried that we wouldn't get it. I remember the joy of learning that it was ALL ours.
I remember when my grandparents lived and worked in Bonners Ferry. We lived with them for a year right after my mom got divorced the first time when she was pregnant with Kelley. I spent a lot of time with my great-grandparents then and a lot of time at the lake. I remember when my grandparents would load up their station wagon and spend long weekends at the lake. In the summer, my grandma would stay at the lake during the week while my grandpa worked in Bonners. She would drive up on Tuesdays to do laundry and whatever needed to be done at home and then drive back to the lake on Wednesdays. On Fridays my grandpa would drive down. After we moved out of their home, my sisters and I, would stay with them for a month every summer. That was back when Lilac Lodge was still just a summer cabin.
I remember when my grandpa retired and my grandparents built a house next door to Lilac Lodge and connected the two homes with a mudroom and this became their permanent residence. We would still come for a month every summer. Kirk and I call those days in the 1980s the glory days of the lake. But were they glorious? They were to us and perhaps to our cousins but I highly doubt they were glorious to all of the adults. There is no way that the rampant dysfunction that exists now didn't have its beginnings in the 70s and 80s. But in my memory those were wonderful times at the lake.
I remember after my grandpa died I thought that the lake would never be the same. It wasn't. It evolved again. I remember my grandma living there alone. We moved to Spokane from Salt Lake a little less than a year after he died. Those were some very special times at the lake. Just my grandma and our little family. Reilly was a toddler and Kameron just a baby. Kameron took his first steps in the living room with my grandma luring him with a cookie. All the rest of my family...mom and siblings...still lived in Utah and so we had this beautiful time with my grandma all to ourselves. It was then that I got to know her as a person rather than just as my grandma and I got to experience the lake on a different level and with four seasons. I cherish that time. We had many discussions about her vision for the future of the lake house...what she did and did not want to happen... and what would ever induce her to sell. I am so grateful for those conversations. They helped me to make some hard decisions. I have reflected on them many times in the course of the last year.
I remember the lonely years after my grandma went blind and had to move to assisted living. She spent her days at the lake house while my uncle worked in the basement. He continued the family business that he and my grandpa had started. He would take her back to the assisted living place every night. Tensions ran high with the extended family as to how the lake house was to be regarded. Private home? Family vacation home? Another uncle made rules and proclamations that brought discord and strife. When my grandma passed away, everything changed again.
I remember the home being my mother's and the beauty and style that she put into the place. She put her own special mark onto the house and made it her own. I wish that she would have had more time to enjoy it. I was an owner of the lake house longer than she got to be. I am grateful for the special times spent with her there. I am supremely grateful for the conversations that she and I had about the lake house. Especially our last one-on-one conversation as we floated on the lake and she told me point blank her thoughts. What a gift. That is a conversation that has guided me throughout this whole process. I KNOW what she would have wanted to happen with the lake house because she literally told me in our last conversation. Her words have been a guiding light through the darkness. Thanks Mom!
I know what the lake house has been like with my siblings and myself as owners. Places have energy. We all know that. And spaces hold onto energy long after the events have taken place. The energy of the lake house is negative now. I wouldn't say that my siblings and I are solely to blame. The dysfunction of the extended family has been off the charts for many years. Its contribution is felt. There is too much anger, sadness, guilt, and regret. It's tangible. That place should be filled to the rafters with joy, laughter, love, and positivity once again. It's time.
I am grateful to have been a caretaker of this sacred place. I have loved it and cleaned it and repaired it and mowed it and weeded it and raked it and protected it and now my watch is done. I couldn't have done better by this property or those loved ones who went before me. I couldn't have taken better care of it. I couldn't have treated it with more respect. I couldn't have loved it more. Of that there is no doubt.
And so I remember. I will remember. Just as the trees remember my great-grandfather's name and my grandmother's name and my mother's name and mine. The echoes on Echo Beach will continue; only now they are echoes through time. My great-grandfather's voice, my grandmother's voice, my mother's voice, and mine.
Before I left, I walked through each and every room and said thank you and I love you and goodbye. I too hugged the house as I left. Love and gratitude displaces enmity, anger, and sadness. Love is what ultimately remains.
First one in...last one out.
