On a small island in Lake Erie called Hickory Island my great grandfather built a cottage—roomy and rustic with a wide porch across the front. Being Scottish, he named it “Blink Bonny” but we just called it “Hickory.”
My grandmother and her sister inherited the cottage and the whole family came every summer. The front lawn sloped down to a gravely beach where only the children went swimming—warned to not swallow the water. Nobody used the word “pollution” back then.
At the edge of the horizon was the shadow of a foreign country. Canada, my grandparents said. We often saw freighters out on the lake, hauling iron ore and grain—and we always stopped to watch. For a long time, the huge boat hardly seemed to be moving—and then it was gone.
At dinner, the family gathered to share potato salad, corn-on-the-cob, strawberry shortcake. And I felt so happy in this larger circle, wishing I could live forever in the attic bedroom with my cousins.
Instead, my grandmother and her sister sold the cottage, saying it was too costly to keep up, and the adults agreed. Nobody asked me. I was twelve years old, unable to grasp this finality while playing dolls on the daybed.
My summers at Hickory were like those freighters which seemed to move so slowly and then were gone.
