August 8: In my mind, I’m 12 years old. My family is at Dyke’s Cottages near Port Carling for their annual vacation. Having waited the mandatory hour after eating lunch, we’ve been released to head down to the dock for the afternoon swim. Out the front door, letting the screen door slam behind us, my sister and I run down the dirt path to the dock at full speed. The dirt is hard-packed and there are no stones to bruise your feet. Passing in front of the neighbouring cottage, the path begins to fall away toward the dock. At this point, there’s a choice: slow down and use some large stepping stones in the main path to go down the hill, or, jump over the stones – using a deft dab of the left foot on an adjacent outcropping to redirect your trajectory – down to the dock. I go high, flying through the air to land near the dock.
My towel is tossed on a chair, and I run off the end of the dock at top speed, windmilling arms and legs for extra distance. The force of hitting the water often gives me a nose-full, but that’s just part of the deal. (As I got older I would realize that water skiing was often fun for the same reason: a huge crash without injury or embarrassment just added to the fun and yielded another story that got more dramatic with each telling.)
It’s easy to say that this ritual is memorable because it reminds me of the fun I had as a kid. That’s partly true, but I think it would be more accurate to say that it represents the freedom to behave in a childish way without consequences. We grew up with rules. Rules for talking or not talking. who to talk to, how to behave, how to dress. Until I was 18 I was required to be home when the streetlights came on, and couldn’t go out on Sunday unless we went to church in the morning.* Summer was a time when most of those rules were temporarily suspended.
I thought about those times at Dykes as my grandchildren jumped off the dock here at Regatta Island. It was pretty much a procession of one after the other for most of the afternoon: up the ladder (watching out for the dreaded dock spiders); running down the dock toward the (slightly) deeper water, and launch off the dock. Repeat until exhaustion inevitably sets in.
I don’t recall my Grandfathers ever swimming, much less taking a flying leap off the dock into the lake, and that’s such a pity. As a generation, I’m happy that we are more relaxed about these things and actually spend time in the lake with the kids. And I’m very grateful that I have been able to give them the opportunity to experience relatively rules-free “cottage life” in some way during the short time they were here. (Perhaps predictably, their visit was cut short by a massive storm that took down a couple of small trees, and cut off all power to Regatta and the neighbouring islands for two-and-a-half days.)
I’m hopeful that at some point in the future we will fondly remember the time spent together at Regatta much as I remember the times my family spent at Dykes. There was nothing particularly outstanding about the place itself, but the freedom and fun it represented has stayed with me – in my memory – for more than 5 decades.
Now if you will excuse me, I’m going to run down the path and jump in the lake. Just for old times sake.
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* In a twist to the “Sunday church rule”, we didn’t have to stay indoors if the family “overslept” and couldn’t make the 11 o’clock service. Many times, my sister and I would lie awake, still and silent in bed until after 10 to avoid going. And, I’m sure, many is the time Mum would do the same.