What a beautiful morning it was! I almost sat down and wrote an entry then -- I didn't -- but when I first went outside around 6:30, it was crisp and cool and beautiful. In the Hubs' family, we call this a Squam Morning.
Squam Lake, I am told, would be the biggest lake in most other states, but in New Hampshire, it sits within a half hour's drive from Lake Winnepasaukee, which I think would be one of the Great Lakes if it were with the others. But it's land-locked in New Hampshire, huge (am I right, summer-gale?) and Squam is the kid brother lake down the road.
My in-laws discovered Squam sometime in the early sixties, when their kids were little. I think they found it through an ad in the paper. They made the arrangements to stay in one of those guest cottage/bungalow places on the shore of a cove at one end of the lake, and they loved it. They returned every year for a long time, maybe 25 years or more. It was in the woods, at the foot of a mountain, on the edge of lake. The cabin was tiny, but that was part of the charm. There were always other kids to play with. Some years, the FIL's sister and her family would go, too.
They would stay for two weeks, the men and boys spending most of their time fishing, the women and girls antiquing or sitting on the dock doing needlework, the children playing. Everybody swam in the lake, which was crystal clear.
The year before the Hubs and I were married, when we were engaged, I joined them, and we continued to do so for many years, until K was a year old or thereabouts. We had outgrown the cabin by then; the ILs rented a private home a little ways down the cove and they would stay there a month. We would go for a week.
It was really idyllic there, and every morning was crisp and cool and beautiful. When we got up, we'd put on long pants and sweatshirts, and be peeled down into shorts and tee-shirts by mid-afternoon, only to pile the layers back on by dark. By the time we stopped going, we had the two girls, and the SIL had her two kids, too, and they were all under five and the MIL was as happy as I've ever seen her. But it got harder and harder for us; first the SIL quit going and then we did and then the FIL retired, and they really didn't need to get away from it all anymore, so they tapered off, too.
The funny thing, for me, was that it was always the very end of the summer when we went, just before Labor Day. To the Hubs, this was when a vacation should be taken, to mark the end of the summer and to have a great time before getting back to the grind. I found it hard because I started work the day after Labor Day, and the kids had to be at whatever school they were in, and I needed time to decompress between vacation and work. And my family's vacation had always been the week of July 4, because my father's entire industry shut down that week, so that's when everybody had to go. I can only imagine that the end of the summer was no picnic for the MIL either, who had no time to come home and do laundry and get her kids to school the next day. She also cooked many, many meals beforehand and they brought them up to Squam in a cooler, but she'd have to go grocery shopping the minute she got home.
In honor of today's Squam morning, here's one of the best pictures I've ever taken in my life. The Hubs and I were at the rented house one evening with baby R, the ILs had gone out, and we saw a storm approaching from the other side of the lake. It wasn't raining on us yet, but I went out to the dock with my camera.
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I'm watching The Golden Girls
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