My Cabin: Dad's Dream

When I was a child, my parents loved to camp – not the “easy” way, as with an RV or in a modern campground, but what I refer to as “hard-core” camping – i.e., two canoes, tents, mummy bags and no facilities. We camped up and down the East Coast, but our favorite spots were in the Adirondacks of New York.

However, as my two brothers and I got older, we were not as enthusiastic about these “get back to nature” trips. And my parents, thinking ahead to their eventual retirement, decided to look for a cabin on a lake that was accessible from our home in Connecticut. After much searching, they stumbled across a cabin on a little-known private lake in a small town called Winchendon, Mass. My parents fell in love with it, and not just because it was almost new and included all of the amenities that we had been sorely missing during our camping years. Its A-frame architecture reminded us of being in a big tent, and we could still enjoy the sound of raindrops on the roof. We spent most weekends at our lakehouse, waterskiing and tubing in the summer, and skiing in the nearby mountains in the winter.

My father took every opportunity to invite family and friends to the lake – sometimes overwhelming the small house, which had only a single bathroom and absolutely no privacy with an open sleeping loft and louvered doors on the bathroom. My father was happiest when the house was at (or beyond) capacity. Each year all of my girlfriends from high school would come up for at least a week, and often longer, and we would spend countless hours on the boat waterskiing and sunning ourselves – almost always with my father at the helm, basking in the fact that so many were enjoying the lake that he loved so much.

When my father passed away prematurely – just four days before the birth of our first child – my husband and I knew that we would continue the tradition my father had begun and make the lake a place that our family and friends could enjoy for years to come. That launched a major renovation – one that my father always wanted to do but did not have the finances to carry out – which included the addition of a full walk-out basement, a large kitchen to accommodate many cooks and their families, a master bedroom and bath, and sleeping quarters for 16 people.

My father has been gone for nine years, but his spirit and the amazing gift he gave to all of us – which still brings us all together for long weekends and endless nights talking around the campfire – is still here, just in a much larger form.

Now, when I gaze upon the lake at 7 a.m., with the water like glass reflecting the clear blue sky, I am reminded that this is exactly what my father would have called “the perfect lake day.”