We’d always been able to get by.
I guess we still are, but it’s been harder than Peter and I had first thought.
I see him, across the bay over at MacGillvary’s Point. He’s pushing snow, clearing out the driveway up to the cottage so Hank and Helen can get in. We got a call from them, they’d been following the weather forecast for up here at the lake, had heard we got a dump, want to come up for the weekend to go snowmobiling.
Peter will probably be able to clear them out with the plow on the front of the Jeep. This year he got a blower for the back, he might have to use that if the snow is too deep. When he uses the blower, he has to drive in reverse. That's hard on his neck and shoulder, turning around like that.
But in some places … well, there’s just nowhere left to push it.
Especially this year.
I’ll watch, wait until he’s stopped, call him on his cell, just to encourage him. He works so hard.
There’s quite a few he plows out over there.
The phone started to ring yesterday. Not just Hank, but also the Murrays and the Diamonds, and who else … well, there’s quite a list now, over there on the table.
They all want to come this weekend, will go back and forth to each other’s cabins having their red wine and their Baileys and burning the firewood that Peter had got in for them.
And it’s all good for business at the General Store, but I can’t stand the annoying whine of those blasted snowmobiles racing on the lake. They stay out to all hours.
We heard the ice on the lake isn’t solid over by the marina. We’ll tell them that but they’ll still go over that way anyway. Peter will stand over by the window and watch for them, ready to go out with a ladder across the ice in case they go through.
Peter’s like that.
I put in a call to the Gordon’s man. We’ve a delivery coming up tomorrow. We’ve kept pretty stocked in the General Store, but they’ll all want eggs and bacon for breakfast. I called to make sure there’d be enough. And frozen burgers too for the fancy barbecues they have out on their decks. Oh, I should check the marshmallows for the s’mores, but we have enough packages I think. There’s plenty of canned beans on the shelf. They don’t drink much milk, but I’ll have to get cream in the for the coffee. For a lot of them, they just use the Baileys they bring with them.
Before he left, Peter brought in wood for me, put it by the stove. While I was still under the quilt I heard him getting the fire going. He filled his thermos with coffee, then rinsed out the coffee pot for me filled the filter cone with coffee, all ready to just turn on when I got up.
I remember lying there listening, treasuring him for his thoughtfulness.
And then I drifted back to sleep, nestled in. It was so silent outside, the sort of silence that comes with falling snow. I strained to hear the sound of the Jeep down the road. He should be ploughing there for the regular folk going to work in town. The County plough would’ve been down the highway already.
Dawn light is greying in once I’m up and dressed. He calls at just the right time, when he figures that I’d be up and dressed. I was already treasuring my coffee in the dragonfly mug he gave me last year, the one he picked out in that little store over in Maynooth. He says he loves me and asks how my day is going. I let him know that I had slept in and when I saw how much snow there was I phoned for Beth to come into the store. I just didn’t want to struggle with the power wheelchair through the fresh snow to open up. I hope not too many people came to the store to find it closed. Beth’s good, she could handle any complaints when she got in.
Peter told me to just stay in and watch the snow. It’s that kind of day. He said that Maurice came out and they surveyed the snow on the roofs of the cottages, figure they will need to shovel them off. Maurice heard that some of the cabins over in Blind Bay had their roofs collapse on Tuesday after the snow Monday night. They get a bit more over there on that side of the lake. But, if it’s starting to happen in Blind Bay, then …
I don’t like Peter climbing up on roofs. He hates heights and ladders. I wish I could be out there with him. But then with the MS I'd just be in the way, something more for him to worry about.
By midmorning I’m content with the warmth from the wood stove and my chair over by the window. The moisture of my breath frosts the inside of the pane, leaves a pattern like ferns and snowflakes. I scrape if off and look back across the bay but I don’t see him anymore. He’ll have worked his way up past the old McGillvary homestead, to get to the places up the hill with the view over the south end of the lake. The County would’ve been up there, ploughing out. None of the hill people from the city had called, I phoned to tell him that, so he could leave their places for another day. He said that he and Maurice were going to go over there anyway to check the roofs. That side of the lookout gets more snow.
We didn’t think it would be this much work.
When we sold our home down in Oakville and bought the General Store up here at Fireweed Lake we thought life would be like it was when we came up to the cottages. We drove past the General Store and Lakeside Motel when we were up for a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, saw the For Sale sign, talked about it all the way home down the 400. In the snarl of traffic around Toronto we decided. Peter had been dreading another winter season as an accountant, with year ends and upcoming tax season. He wanted to build wooden furniture.
We called the realtor from the car, found out what they were asking for the General Store, he said he’d forward some of the financials on the business. We found out that the motel was part of the deal, that there were some long term residents in there that generated a bit of revenue.
And then our imaginations ran away with us. Peter could take a unit or two of that old motel and set up his woodshop, he had lots of magazines with designs for furniture that would sell to the cottagers. With what we thought we could get for the city house there’d be enough to finally get him the tools he’d always dreamed of.
And watching him, I saw the strain of accountancy melt off him.
That first winter we put in the ramps and widened the aisles of the General Store so I could work there in my wheelchair. Back then, three years ago, I was still able to walk a bit, but we figured we’d do the work in the off-season so that I could use the chair as much as I needed to in the future. The way the MS was going, I’d likely have more relapses and I wasn’t coming out of them so good. Peter was excited when he got his woodshop with all those saws and planers and lathes and such. I loved seeing him so.
That winter we met Maurice and Marie who live just down the highway. With Maurice’s help Peter was able to take out some of the walls between the units of the motel to create a better living space for us.
And Peter was so happy. Didn’t get much furniture made. But he was happy.
There wasn’t that much snow that winter.
It’s getting on now, dusk comes on so fast. I call over to Marie. She says that Maurice isn’t back yet either. Cell coverage isn’t so good over there, the other side of the lookout, if they got that far. She thought it would be okay if the two of them were together.
The financials didn’t work out as well as we had thought.
The next spring Leonard Crabb in unit F died. It wasn’t that unexpected. But when he died Irene, who was next door to him, decided that she was going go into the county nursing home. It was just too lonely for her out at the lake without Leonard. She called us the city folk, said we’re not the same. Marie helped her move.
After months of trying Peter figured that with the time he put in, and the costs of the kiln dried local lumber he wanted to use, that there wouldn’t be a hope in hell that he could turn a profit building furniture. I watched that dream die for him, he regretted all that he’d spent on the tools he bought to make a go of it. For a while I saw the old accountancy side of him come back, the bitter reality of spreadsheets and projections. I told him that he could have it as a hobby, but he said it wasn’t the same. How he struggled with it, what we’d spent. But every once in a while he’d come back over to the store after an afternoon in the shop and proudly showed off what he’d made. Like a little kid, really.
I love seeing the boy in Peter, it doesn’t come out very often.
We used the rooms that Leonard and Irene vacated to set up the Curio and Consignment Shop. Picked up some antique furniture from spring auction sales over the MacGregor way to resell. Marie made fudge. It sold pretty good and I was glad for her. With all the kids, Maurice and Marie didn’t have a lot of money.
And we always got by.
The next summer and the next we struggled with cash flow, making enough to get through the winter. Peter was starting to show the old sort of stress he had when he was an accountant.
Cottagers had been asking us to keep an eye on their places, had gotten to know us in the General Store when they had been in for their eggs and avocadoes (yes, I was surprised both by the fact that the Gordon’s man could bring up avocadoes and that they would sell). Peter, being the sort of guy he was, said sure when they asked him about checking their places. They offered to pay and Peter said he would keep track of the cost of gas and such and let them know in the spring. Everyone trusted everyone. It’s that way for the folk who come into the store. That first winter he just had a few cottages to check, didn't take much time. He’d long figured we needed to put a snow blade on the front of his Jeep so he sold one of the saws from his shop to cover the cost. He was really careful about how often he went out to check on the places because the store’s cash flow is so low in the winter months and with the blade on the front the Jeep burned a lot of gas. Fortunately there wasn’t that much snow.
The next spring Peter discovered he hadn’t been up often enough to the Jarvis place and a den of martens had gotten into their cottage and had made a real mess. Peter felt bad about it, guilty that he hadn’t been watchful enough to have caught it.
So that spring he and Maurice came up with a better plan. For a monthly fee they’d do a more thorough job of it all, checking the places inside and out, ploughing so there would be winter access if the city folk wanted to have a winter holiday up here, getting in firewood for them. I could see the accountant side of Peter come back with a spreadsheet on the computer and he seemed oddly satisfied to be doing that again, doing it now for his own business. He priced in the cost of gas and figured out the hours so he’d know a reasonable fee to charge. I could see him really happy about being able to pay Maurice from that monthly cash flow. No one quarrelled about the fee, just gave us cheques or set up automatic direct deposits into the store account.
By the next winter, more and more folk had signed on. Peter and Maurice kept coming up with ideas to customize the service, like a couple of kids really. They called themselves The Cottage Concierge, would even go in and set a fire if folk gave them an expected time of arrival. After the long winter’s drive up from the city their cottage would be warm. Either Peter or Maurice would wait at the cabin, keeping a watchful eye on the woodstove, ready to greet folk when they arrived.
Peter loved that part of the business, the smiles and handshakes and questions about other people’s kids and how they were doing. He just tries to make everything special for everyone else.
Marie even made cinnamon buns that they would take to cook in the cabin’s oven so it smelled awesome when folk came in the door. Everyone was so delighted with it that they always gave a really big tip, more than Marie could’ve charged for the buns in the store. Peter made sure those tips went to Maurice and Marie, because finances were such a struggle for them.
With those monthly fees our own cash flow stabilized too. It was a good thing as my MS was progressing and I tired more quickly in the General Store. Fortunately, Maurice and Marie had sufficient kids, all two years apart, we could hire in. Peter was good about it, wanted me to just enjoy living in the country of beautiful lakes and trees, to sip my coffee. Said he loved me.
Eight in the evening and it’s already been dark for two hours. The snow is coming in heavier now and when I try to call Peter on the cell all I get is that he’s out of cellular range.
I so hope that they’ve hunkered down in one of the cabins, set a fire, content to wait for the light of day to make their way out. No way I can expect them back tonight.
But all I can think is that he fell off one of the roofs and he’s buried up to his neck in the snow, cold, frozen there. The thought lodges in my mind, I just can’t shake it.
It’s that way for me sometimes, I think that something has happened but it’s more than just thinking, it goes all the way down into my stomach, makes me feel sick. And sometimes what I think happened actually did happen, even when I couldn’t have known it at the time.
It bothers me, really.
I’ve used up all the wood that Peter brought in for me. There’s too much snow for me to get to the woodpile outside. Beth closed up early, went home at six. I never even thought to have her get me more wood in. And the electric heat, it just doesn’t do it for me, I can’t get warm enough with it even when I turn up the thermostat.
I just can’t content myself. The damn MS exhaustion has set in.
I’m sure I won’t be able to sleep, not knowing about Peter... you know, that he’s okay. I try to remember the last words I spoke to him, and those he spoke to me.
I guess we still are, but it’s been harder than Peter and I had first thought.
I see him, across the bay over at MacGillvary’s Point. He’s pushing snow, clearing out the driveway up to the cottage so Hank and Helen can get in. We got a call from them, they’d been following the weather forecast for up here at the lake, had heard we got a dump, want to come up for the weekend to go snowmobiling.
Peter will probably be able to clear them out with the plow on the front of the Jeep. This year he got a blower for the back, he might have to use that if the snow is too deep. When he uses the blower, he has to drive in reverse. That's hard on his neck and shoulder, turning around like that.
But in some places … well, there’s just nowhere left to push it.
Especially this year.
I’ll watch, wait until he’s stopped, call him on his cell, just to encourage him. He works so hard.
There’s quite a few he plows out over there.
The phone started to ring yesterday. Not just Hank, but also the Murrays and the Diamonds, and who else … well, there’s quite a list now, over there on the table.
They all want to come this weekend, will go back and forth to each other’s cabins having their red wine and their Baileys and burning the firewood that Peter had got in for them.
And it’s all good for business at the General Store, but I can’t stand the annoying whine of those blasted snowmobiles racing on the lake. They stay out to all hours.
We heard the ice on the lake isn’t solid over by the marina. We’ll tell them that but they’ll still go over that way anyway. Peter will stand over by the window and watch for them, ready to go out with a ladder across the ice in case they go through.
Peter’s like that.
I put in a call to the Gordon’s man. We’ve a delivery coming up tomorrow. We’ve kept pretty stocked in the General Store, but they’ll all want eggs and bacon for breakfast. I called to make sure there’d be enough. And frozen burgers too for the fancy barbecues they have out on their decks. Oh, I should check the marshmallows for the s’mores, but we have enough packages I think. There’s plenty of canned beans on the shelf. They don’t drink much milk, but I’ll have to get cream in the for the coffee. For a lot of them, they just use the Baileys they bring with them.
Before he left, Peter brought in wood for me, put it by the stove. While I was still under the quilt I heard him getting the fire going. He filled his thermos with coffee, then rinsed out the coffee pot for me filled the filter cone with coffee, all ready to just turn on when I got up.
I remember lying there listening, treasuring him for his thoughtfulness.
And then I drifted back to sleep, nestled in. It was so silent outside, the sort of silence that comes with falling snow. I strained to hear the sound of the Jeep down the road. He should be ploughing there for the regular folk going to work in town. The County plough would’ve been down the highway already.
Dawn light is greying in once I’m up and dressed. He calls at just the right time, when he figures that I’d be up and dressed. I was already treasuring my coffee in the dragonfly mug he gave me last year, the one he picked out in that little store over in Maynooth. He says he loves me and asks how my day is going. I let him know that I had slept in and when I saw how much snow there was I phoned for Beth to come into the store. I just didn’t want to struggle with the power wheelchair through the fresh snow to open up. I hope not too many people came to the store to find it closed. Beth’s good, she could handle any complaints when she got in.
Peter told me to just stay in and watch the snow. It’s that kind of day. He said that Maurice came out and they surveyed the snow on the roofs of the cottages, figure they will need to shovel them off. Maurice heard that some of the cabins over in Blind Bay had their roofs collapse on Tuesday after the snow Monday night. They get a bit more over there on that side of the lake. But, if it’s starting to happen in Blind Bay, then …
I don’t like Peter climbing up on roofs. He hates heights and ladders. I wish I could be out there with him. But then with the MS I'd just be in the way, something more for him to worry about.
By midmorning I’m content with the warmth from the wood stove and my chair over by the window. The moisture of my breath frosts the inside of the pane, leaves a pattern like ferns and snowflakes. I scrape if off and look back across the bay but I don’t see him anymore. He’ll have worked his way up past the old McGillvary homestead, to get to the places up the hill with the view over the south end of the lake. The County would’ve been up there, ploughing out. None of the hill people from the city had called, I phoned to tell him that, so he could leave their places for another day. He said that he and Maurice were going to go over there anyway to check the roofs. That side of the lookout gets more snow.
We didn’t think it would be this much work.
When we sold our home down in Oakville and bought the General Store up here at Fireweed Lake we thought life would be like it was when we came up to the cottages. We drove past the General Store and Lakeside Motel when we were up for a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, saw the For Sale sign, talked about it all the way home down the 400. In the snarl of traffic around Toronto we decided. Peter had been dreading another winter season as an accountant, with year ends and upcoming tax season. He wanted to build wooden furniture.
We called the realtor from the car, found out what they were asking for the General Store, he said he’d forward some of the financials on the business. We found out that the motel was part of the deal, that there were some long term residents in there that generated a bit of revenue.
And then our imaginations ran away with us. Peter could take a unit or two of that old motel and set up his woodshop, he had lots of magazines with designs for furniture that would sell to the cottagers. With what we thought we could get for the city house there’d be enough to finally get him the tools he’d always dreamed of.
And watching him, I saw the strain of accountancy melt off him.
That first winter we put in the ramps and widened the aisles of the General Store so I could work there in my wheelchair. Back then, three years ago, I was still able to walk a bit, but we figured we’d do the work in the off-season so that I could use the chair as much as I needed to in the future. The way the MS was going, I’d likely have more relapses and I wasn’t coming out of them so good. Peter was excited when he got his woodshop with all those saws and planers and lathes and such. I loved seeing him so.
That winter we met Maurice and Marie who live just down the highway. With Maurice’s help Peter was able to take out some of the walls between the units of the motel to create a better living space for us.
And Peter was so happy. Didn’t get much furniture made. But he was happy.
There wasn’t that much snow that winter.
It’s getting on now, dusk comes on so fast. I call over to Marie. She says that Maurice isn’t back yet either. Cell coverage isn’t so good over there, the other side of the lookout, if they got that far. She thought it would be okay if the two of them were together.
The financials didn’t work out as well as we had thought.
The next spring Leonard Crabb in unit F died. It wasn’t that unexpected. But when he died Irene, who was next door to him, decided that she was going go into the county nursing home. It was just too lonely for her out at the lake without Leonard. She called us the city folk, said we’re not the same. Marie helped her move.
After months of trying Peter figured that with the time he put in, and the costs of the kiln dried local lumber he wanted to use, that there wouldn’t be a hope in hell that he could turn a profit building furniture. I watched that dream die for him, he regretted all that he’d spent on the tools he bought to make a go of it. For a while I saw the old accountancy side of him come back, the bitter reality of spreadsheets and projections. I told him that he could have it as a hobby, but he said it wasn’t the same. How he struggled with it, what we’d spent. But every once in a while he’d come back over to the store after an afternoon in the shop and proudly showed off what he’d made. Like a little kid, really.
I love seeing the boy in Peter, it doesn’t come out very often.
We used the rooms that Leonard and Irene vacated to set up the Curio and Consignment Shop. Picked up some antique furniture from spring auction sales over the MacGregor way to resell. Marie made fudge. It sold pretty good and I was glad for her. With all the kids, Maurice and Marie didn’t have a lot of money.
And we always got by.
The next summer and the next we struggled with cash flow, making enough to get through the winter. Peter was starting to show the old sort of stress he had when he was an accountant.
Cottagers had been asking us to keep an eye on their places, had gotten to know us in the General Store when they had been in for their eggs and avocadoes (yes, I was surprised both by the fact that the Gordon’s man could bring up avocadoes and that they would sell). Peter, being the sort of guy he was, said sure when they asked him about checking their places. They offered to pay and Peter said he would keep track of the cost of gas and such and let them know in the spring. Everyone trusted everyone. It’s that way for the folk who come into the store. That first winter he just had a few cottages to check, didn't take much time. He’d long figured we needed to put a snow blade on the front of his Jeep so he sold one of the saws from his shop to cover the cost. He was really careful about how often he went out to check on the places because the store’s cash flow is so low in the winter months and with the blade on the front the Jeep burned a lot of gas. Fortunately there wasn’t that much snow.
The next spring Peter discovered he hadn’t been up often enough to the Jarvis place and a den of martens had gotten into their cottage and had made a real mess. Peter felt bad about it, guilty that he hadn’t been watchful enough to have caught it.
So that spring he and Maurice came up with a better plan. For a monthly fee they’d do a more thorough job of it all, checking the places inside and out, ploughing so there would be winter access if the city folk wanted to have a winter holiday up here, getting in firewood for them. I could see the accountant side of Peter come back with a spreadsheet on the computer and he seemed oddly satisfied to be doing that again, doing it now for his own business. He priced in the cost of gas and figured out the hours so he’d know a reasonable fee to charge. I could see him really happy about being able to pay Maurice from that monthly cash flow. No one quarrelled about the fee, just gave us cheques or set up automatic direct deposits into the store account.
By the next winter, more and more folk had signed on. Peter and Maurice kept coming up with ideas to customize the service, like a couple of kids really. They called themselves The Cottage Concierge, would even go in and set a fire if folk gave them an expected time of arrival. After the long winter’s drive up from the city their cottage would be warm. Either Peter or Maurice would wait at the cabin, keeping a watchful eye on the woodstove, ready to greet folk when they arrived.
Peter loved that part of the business, the smiles and handshakes and questions about other people’s kids and how they were doing. He just tries to make everything special for everyone else.
Marie even made cinnamon buns that they would take to cook in the cabin’s oven so it smelled awesome when folk came in the door. Everyone was so delighted with it that they always gave a really big tip, more than Marie could’ve charged for the buns in the store. Peter made sure those tips went to Maurice and Marie, because finances were such a struggle for them.
With those monthly fees our own cash flow stabilized too. It was a good thing as my MS was progressing and I tired more quickly in the General Store. Fortunately, Maurice and Marie had sufficient kids, all two years apart, we could hire in. Peter was good about it, wanted me to just enjoy living in the country of beautiful lakes and trees, to sip my coffee. Said he loved me.
Eight in the evening and it’s already been dark for two hours. The snow is coming in heavier now and when I try to call Peter on the cell all I get is that he’s out of cellular range.
I so hope that they’ve hunkered down in one of the cabins, set a fire, content to wait for the light of day to make their way out. No way I can expect them back tonight.
But all I can think is that he fell off one of the roofs and he’s buried up to his neck in the snow, cold, frozen there. The thought lodges in my mind, I just can’t shake it.
It’s that way for me sometimes, I think that something has happened but it’s more than just thinking, it goes all the way down into my stomach, makes me feel sick. And sometimes what I think happened actually did happen, even when I couldn’t have known it at the time.
It bothers me, really.
I’ve used up all the wood that Peter brought in for me. There’s too much snow for me to get to the woodpile outside. Beth closed up early, went home at six. I never even thought to have her get me more wood in. And the electric heat, it just doesn’t do it for me, I can’t get warm enough with it even when I turn up the thermostat.
I just can’t content myself. The damn MS exhaustion has set in.
I’m sure I won’t be able to sleep, not knowing about Peter... you know, that he’s okay. I try to remember the last words I spoke to him, and those he spoke to me.