The House on the Hill

This is the veranda I most long to spend my summer afternoons

Unfortunately, it is the veranda I may never be able to enjoy again.

It wasn't supposed to be that way.

There are some topics which spin out in all different directions........so much so that it's difficult to pin down a spot to begin. It's like a big ball of wool made from collected bits of yarn tied and rolled up.......or the thousand tied threads found on the back of a tapestry. Each piece of yarn, or each thread is a story in itself, but more fully understood if one could find a way to knit the wool into one warm sweater or turn the tapestry around to capture the true design.

One of the more complicated, emotionally charged and yet fascinating topics in my knitting basket is set in a place called Spencer's Island. Just writing down the name of the village conjures up......oh perhaps a trilogy, a couple of scripts, several eulogies (some I have made an attempt to write), and a host of celebrations worth of writing. Amazing, considering the place probably has a population of 50 in the dead of winter and 90 when the summer people are in full attendance. Considering the majority are related in some strange ancestral formulation, the numbers expand exponentially to spin out in all directions. The real numbers of people living there mean nothing when put beside the multitude of stories found in the air in Spencer's Island. It's tapestry is richly woven from 8 generations.

My children are the 8th generation to call Spencer's Island their own. My husband and his siblings are the 7th. My mother in law and her siblings were the 6th. And after 25 years of soaking in the stories and of being a part of many more recent ones, my personal ties to this place are deeply felt.

Perhaps this is why this topic is so difficult to write about. My feelings sit on the outside of my skin, more so right now than at any other time and sometimes words don't do justice to raw emotion.

The house in the photo is the home my mother in law grew up in. It was left to her when her parents passed away and continued to spend her summers sleeping in her childhood bedroom surrounded by memories. Some of the same people whom she grew up with also returned every summer to their childhood homes. They grew up and grew older together creating new layers to the history as did their children who have also grown up there every summer and who share it with their children. It makes for a multi-age community who shared (and continue to) many beach suppers and celebrations. They also shared many secrets and stories from the past.

Bits of yarn accumulating. Colourful threads intertwining........

The land around it........a thousand + acres was left to her brother, Uncle Max to work on. He lived there year round select cutting the forest, cultivating blueberries, making sweet maple syrup, tending to his fish pond stocked with rainbow trout, growing a vegetable garden which he abundantly shared with all of us. He also kept a small patch of the juiciest strawberries, loaded in red goodness to present to me every summer to make jam with and to eat right out of the box. He used to complain in a teasing way how much he hated growing strawberries......a right pain the arse they were, and that I was the only one he'd make the effort for. A bit of a flirt Uncle Max was........I bet he said that to all the ladies who married into this village. He was also a colourful tapestry all on his own and I miss him very much.

SEE!! I had no idea I was going to write a bit there about Uncle Max. The stories are so numerous and so urgently needing to come out that I can easily slip away and spin out in several directions.........I wish I had a whole year free to ramble through them all at a leisurely pace. But, that ain't gonna happen.....so I best take on one nibble at a time......and Uncle Max will one day play a key role in the full story.

OK........back to the house..............it sits empty right now, though will be inhabited in a couple of weeks. The locks were changed last spring by my sister in law who moved into the house two summers ago much to the dismay of her two brothers and admitedly me. Given full power of attorney and now is the executor of her parents wills, she holds the key. She holds many keys. Her actions, fueled by an unrelenting sense of entitlement have been beyond the pale. Her story will one day unfold as well. I may have to label it as fiction, because quite frankly, I don't think anyone would believe me if I claimed it was the truth.

She stopped talking to me around the same time that she moved into the house in Spencer's Island. She stopped talking to her brothers a little bit after that. She started talking crazymaker talk to anyone who would listen about how she is a saint and how her brothers are unreliably bad people who abandoned their parents. None of it is remotely true, but it has been painful and some have believed her conjured up mean lies. Gee, good thing she was left in charge.

SEE!!! Too much to write about................too many spin outs!!

Back to the house.

I love that house. I love the pantry and the morning flow of people who would begin to show up for coffee and breakfast to greet the day. I loved making the coffee and breakfast, putting a fire on in the woodstove, listening to the CBC, snuggling under a blanket on the couch by the woodstove to read BEFORE anyone else would be awake. I loved inviting a brood of folks to share Thanksgiving with us. I loved the lobster feasts and the flow of wine. The fresh catch of halibut or flounder cooked for morning breakfast. I loved the early morning chats I had with my Mother in Law, Mim when she would be staying there in the summers because she was an early riser too. She was the most relaxed at that time of the day. I loved waiting with Mim for Peter Gzowski to return on Labour Day to take on a year of Morningside on the CBC. We both loved his radio charm.

For 25 years, I have spent weekends and sometimes if we were lucky a leisurely week living in the big white house which sits on a hill overlooking the village. Sometimes it was with my extended family and sometimes with just my own small family and good friends who also grew to love the house. Card games, listening to ball games, music, stories, making crafts with the kids, decorating Easter eggs, pulling together wild bouquets of lilacs, taking photos, cooking big meals, and dancing spontaneously......my husband teaching an eager group of kids how to do the train dance to Rat Pack music.......anniversaries, birthdays, and impromptu late night parties........with me orchestrating the kitchen delights. And the laughs!! Lots of laughs shared with our friends.

I learned how to make pastry, how to make raspberry jelly, how to cook lobster, how to sear scallops in wine, how to shuck mussels in that kitchen. Mim taught me.

8 generations have lived on that property which used to house a working barn a big shed, a general store and a big Victorian house which are all now gone. what is left is the big white house on the hill. 4 have lived some portion of their lives in it. And now, it may all be over. It has been left to be split three ways as has the other parts of their estate. How does one split a house in three when there is such unresolved crazymaking animosity? I fear we will have to walk away. I have had this fear for a long time, but now it seems like it's about to come true.

Last weekend, my family and I took a trip down the Parrsboro shore to spend a weekend in Spencer's Island. Staying in the house wasn't an option. The doors are deadbolt locked. We don't have the key. So, we stayed in a wonderful cabin owned by friends (and most likely distantly related cousins) who live on the other hill which overlooks the island out in the bay which the village is named after. We were grateful for their generosity and understanding and we felt surrounded by familiarity. It was good. However, it just wasn't the same.

I took a walk on Saturday with my daughter, named after an older friend who spent many summers in her own home on the beach (lots of great stories about her too!!) , and we found ourselves heading up the driveway of the house. It stood there looking a little worse for wear, void of cheer, and longing for it. And after we walked all around the property, feeling a pull to gaze at the house, longing to step up onto the veranda and through the front door, we quietly turned around and walked back down the driveway. My head was spinning the yarn remembering the first time we brought her down to introduce her to her ancestry. I could see she too was lost in her thoughts.

It's only a place? It's only a place. No, it's more than a place. And soon I will begin to knit that warm sweater with all of the yarn collected over the years to wrap around this special place. Perhaps I have already begun. My memories and my words will be all that is left. It makes me tearfully sad.

Two generations walking down the "other hill" with a view of Spencer's Island. The tide has just turned and will recede almost a 1/4 of a mile, as it does day in and day out as our lives flow forward.

The lost steps which used to lead to the big Victorian house. I can hear their long ago footsteps heading down to the beach and wharf.