about a boathouse

I love an old wooden boathouse. It’s all cobwebby and musty until the doors are thrown open to summer.

Ours has stood bravely against the raging, frigid storms of 50 Michigan winters. She harbors pails and shovels, nets and paddles, kayaks and tackle boxes. Life preservers, ropes, tools and tackle adorn the walls in delightful disarray.

.

She begs for a new coat of paint, unable to hold on to the last one. So we set to work.
Scraping.
Sanding.
Scraping some more.
Swiping at cobwebs with the old straw broom.

We mix and pour and brush on paint. A deep “Cottage Red” goes not on smooth walls, but on knotted cedar half-logs and all spaces in between.

A garter snake, looking for the afternoon sun, slithers over Katie’s foot, as if surveying her work.

Soon the boathouse is renewed, softly gleaming again in sunlight reflecting off the lake.



And I remember. At six years old, I slept in a boathouse beside a lake while on vacation with my family. The wind and waves both scared and comforted me: their power upon me while also lulling me to sleep.



And I wonder. A boathouse is here waiting. For grandchildren whose parents might allow them to sleep on a cot, paddles overhead, lulled to sleep by the wind and waves. Inside a boathouse.