Life at Little Silver Lake
Two weeks ago – though it feels like a lifetime now – I got home from the first big family vacation of my son’s life.
It was the first time we took him on a plane, the first time we broke out his bald-eagle-adorned American passport, and the first time – after years of proudly traveling for weeks at a time with only a carry-on – that I’ve paid $130 to check a suitcase that clocked in at a back-breaking 70 pounds. That one hurt.
I’m a new kind of traveler now. The kind who holds up security lines with my liquids and snacks and strollers. The kind who unabashedly turns white noise apps up to full volume in an attempt to coax Finnegan into a pre-flight nap. The kind who has to call an UberXL to transport us because no mere sedan can handle all of our luggage. And though I’m making it sound miserable, its actually it’s own kind of pleasure, as are the other inconveniences of parenting – the herculean effort it takes to leave the house, the wall-speckling messiness of mealtime, and the vast quantities of stuff we now take with us everywhere we go. Those inconveniences exist because he exists. Mealtime is messy because, after months of being tube-fed, he’s now a voracious devourer of cheese, fruit, and peanut butter. We can get on a plane because he’s healthy enough to do it. It all still feels like a miracle.
It’s been more than a year since Finnegan’s birth, and it’s startling to look back at photos from this time in 2018: like peering into a life at once foreign and familiar. Every time my phone suggests I go back in time, to see some shot taken a year ago today, I brace myself to be struck by the stark contrast between now and then.
Now he cruises endlessly from coffee table to couch to console table with deft precision, like a baby Free Solo. Then he lay still, flattened beneath a crush of wires, tubes, and plaster casts.
Now he babbles endlessly, laughing and grunting and calling me ‘mama’ (though, admittedly, he calls furniture and toys and other people ‘mama’ too!). Then, his plaintive cries broke my heart.
Now we look towards his future with excitement and optimism. Then, we waited for the results of genetic tests, CT scans, and x-rays with trepidation and fear.
So, to celebrate a year of getting healthier and happier, Emmett, Finnegan, and I flew to my Mom’s place in Eastern Ontario, to the family cottage she’s spent the past year converting into her full-time home.
All my childhood, I spent summers on Little Silver Lake. My Gram and Gramps bought a plot of land there in the 70s, then disassembled a farm house in rural Ontario and rebuilt it, log by log, along the lake’s rocky shores. It became their second home, and, for my parents, brothers, and I, an annual getaway filled with campfires, swimming lessons, and walks in the wilderness.
Back then, the cottage was beautiful but rustic. We showered outdoors, drank water from bottles because what came out of the tap wasn’t potable, and crept nervously out to the outhouse in the middle of the night. Now, thanks to my Mom, the cottage is not only more beautiful than ever, but also as comfortable as a house. The outdoor shower, outhouse, and undrinkable water are all gone, replaced by a bathtub, shower, not one toilet but two, and well water. Finnegan will never know the terror of feeling a spider crawl up his leg during a 3am trip into the woods to pee.
My Mom moved in on the first Wednesday in September, and by Friday, Emmett, Finnegan, and I had descended upon her with an SUV full of luggage and a long list of guests we wanted to have visit. And that’s how we spent two weeks – with a rotating cast of cousins, in-laws, friends, and even Finnegan’s great-grandma Angela. I visited, laughed, wrote, drank lots of wine, and chased Finnegan in perhaps a thousand circles around my Mom’s coffee table.
I also read – one book of essays, another of short stories.
The book of essays, Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror, was bursting with analysis, introspection, and self-awareness – such a satisfying and of-the-moment read. One of its early essays, Always be Optimizing, is so good that I dogeared three consecutive pages with the intent of reproducing them in full here: it’s probably just better if you read it yourself.
The book of stories, Curtis Sittenfeld’s You Think It, I’ll Say It, was similarly fulfilling, full of female characters who are arch, self-aware, and living dramatic inner lives that are invisible beneath their placid exteriors. My favorite story in that collection, Gender Studies, is a wonderfully specific look at lives that she deems “fine and a little horrible:” the lives of vegetarians eating BLTs on the sly, people who name their pets after political scientists, and weekends spent reading, watching prestige TV, and not having sex.
I’m back in New York now – back to reading novels, back to work, and sadly back to seeing Finnegan in snatches at morning and night rather than all day long. But the languid love of those two weeks at Little Silver Lake still lingers.
(All non-book photos by Alex Neary of Wild Eyed Photography.)
