We are driving through Orillia, en route to Muskoka, my family’s long-standing summer playground. Like salmon that return to the same body of water every year, my family returns to the lakes of Muskoka.
My five-year-old grandson’s voice breaks the silence in the car. Miles sounds alarmed. “What do you mean it will take forever to get there, Grandma? You said it would take three hours. That’s not forever.”
“It’s a figure of speech, Miles. It’s what people say when it feels like something will go on forever, even though they know it will end,” I explain.
Miles is quiet, pondering yet another mystery of the English language. I know he is processing the idea that “forever” doesn’t always mean forever. He stares out of the window through his thick black lashes, brows slightly furrowed under the thatch of wavy, dark hair that covers his head.
This year, our ritual return to the lake includes my three bright-eyed New York-based grandkids and their exhausted parents, who arrived in Toronto two days ago after a marathon journey, their car piled high with gear and blanketed by empty juice boxes, pulverized cookies and cheesies.
I offered to take Miles in my car for the last leg of the drive. We will all be staying in a resort consisting of several cottages arrayed around a small, sandy beach, a kids’ playground, a boathouse, a dock and the lodge building, built in the late 1880s.
As we crest the final hill of our journey, there is a clear view of the old lodge and the lawn running down to the blue water of the lake, glinting in the sun.
“See, Grandma,” Miles says. “It didn’t take forever. I told you we would get here.” I unbuckle Miles from his car seat and he launches himself from the car.
The rhythm of a day with three kids under five is frenetic, even at a cottage. In previous years, I have been wakened by the sound of a loon and walked out onto the dock to see the early-morning mist rise from the lake.
This year, I am usually wakened around 6 a.m. by my seven-month-old granddaughter. When I hear her, I throw on my shorts and join Esty and my daughter on the screened-in porch while Esty drinks her bottle. Esty sits like a Buddha in pyjamas on her mom’s lap, staring at the ceiling fan or at the toys scattered on the floor.
Most mornings, while I am still thinking about whether I can indulge in a little more breakfast, Miles and his four-year-old sister, Lyla, race past me in their bathing suits, push open the screen door of the porch and announce they are going swimming.
Whichever adult is not holding Esty grabs the kids’ water wings, towels and sun screen and runs down the path after them, hoping to overtake them before they get to the lake. I spend hours in waist-deep cold water, helping Miles and Lyla to perfect the skill of leaping from a giant flutter board into the lake.
Sometimes Lyla, who is into music videos, provides entertainment. One night after dinner, she performs this year’s anthem of female empowerment, Miley Cyrus’s Flowers. She puts on her leopard-skin-patterned beach cover-up with the pom-pom fringe and prances along the bench on one side of the patio, belting out the song.
It’s obvious she doesn’t understand all of the lines, and since she talks like a four-year-old, all of the ls and Rs in the words become Ws. But her performance is bizarrely faithful to the video, including the parts where she places a hand on a hip and does a hair toss. I am not sure whether to be proud or embarrassed by the fact my granddaughter is a budding diva.
Sometime during the course of the week, I realize I have lost track of time as one perfect cottage day melts into the next. The weather co-operates by providing a cloudless sky and 80-degree temperatures each day. As I am tucking Miles into bed one night, I ask him if he would like to come back to Muskoka next summer.
“If my parents will bring me, I would like to come back. Will you be here next summer, Grandma?” he asks.
“I would like to stay here, forever.” And this time, I don’t have to explain to Miles what I really mean.
Alexandra Raphael lives in Toronto and vacations in Muskoka as often as possible. She is a student in the creative writing program, School of Continuing Studies, at the University of Toronto. Her writing has appeared in the Globe & Mail, Next Avenue and on Medium.
