Heavenly Cottage

We just got back from a little 10-day vacation. We went to my in-laws in Door County for the weekends, and I spent the weekdays in Green Bay at the cottage where my family vacationed in the summers. The cottage is a true cottage, with thin walls, 3 tiny bedrooms, a small kitchen, and a living room and dining room with windows all around to look out onto the bay. From the yard, you can sit and watch the sunrise, the sunset, and an inky black sky speckled with millions of shimmering stars. The waves lull you to sleep at night and provide endless entertainment during the day with the help of some very nice friends down the street and all their water toys. Each year as the car approached the bay, the birds grew louder and the air felt cleaner and my heart woud beat with excitement to experience the yearly ritual of swimming, skiing, getting sunburned, watching the sunset, and sleeping on cots.

Over the last decade, I have become much more of a city-girl. My fear of spiders has grown as my tolerance of dirt and mismatched furniture has shrunk. One might say that this is an irony, considering the 100-year old house I live in, with hand me down furniture and dirt that never seems to come out of some of the crevices of the floors. Fodder for future post. Anyway, something happened this time at the cottage and I connected with it in a way that I haven't in a decade. Or maybe ever. Returning there, I walked in to see the same baskets hanging on yellow walls in the kitchen, the same green sea lantern that provided soft light for midnight bathroom visits, the same map on the wall that announced permanancy to the location. I was comforted by those walls that held the stories of my childhood, the waves that have been and will continue to be the heartbeat of the shore. As my mom and I stayed up late one night and looked out into the milky way and contemplated the size of the universe, I remembered a little picture hanging on one of the walls inside, "Heaven is a little closer in a house by the sea." And I think it's true.