Shorehouse Memories

It's a tiny house in a town virtually unknown. Wetlands that faced near decimation stand across from it, an mini-island that my sister and I coined Minnow Island. My family and I call it the shorehouse though in reality the waters that we wade in are technically considered a lagoon. We have went there every weekend of the summer since I was about six years old and it doesn't look like that will change anytime soon. Now, as fall approaches, we have went down there for officially the last time this season.

My feelings for it are quite mixed. In good times, the shorehouse can be a place of laughter and of joy in its most simplistic form. In the less good times, it can be a place of endless boredom and one that keeps me away from my friends. Still the shorehouse is my second home no matter what, and leaving it always brings about a feeling of melancholy.

This weekend was one of those incredibly dull ones. My parents talked to the neighbors next door while my sister and I were in the house trying desperately to find something to do. Our boredom did get us some sister bonding moments and paint-splattered fingers (the same fingers that painted the demented-looking pumpkins sitting on the porch of our year-long house).

Somewhere along the years, I have grown up. The little girl who curiously combed the island for whatever she could find is not the same girl who has just entered high school. The shorehouse has been a place of escape for so long. In the shorehouse, it is so easy to leave any troubles at the side of the road.

Still, as I left Sunday, I was filled with a melancholy. Though the school year has long since started, leaving the shorehouse meant that summer had officially ended. I associate my shorehouse with summer and all of the sweetness that comes with it. Saying goodbye to the shorehouse for the year was like saying goodbye to a time in my life. It's so easy then to groan at the prospect of coming down, at the prospect of another dull weekend but... When the season's gone, it's gone and that's when it's too late to get that time lost back.

And oh summer at the shorehouse... Summer the taste of a virgin piña colada, the feel of an afternoon wade into the water and of the murk between my toes, the sight of sunlight dancing on the water. I will miss that simple beauty

I will come back though. In a few months' time, another school year will have passed and another time of my life will have ended too. Then I shall wade in the waters without thought once again.