I feel that I must record the happenings of this summer, because the wind of change is blowing through our family. I felt it years ago when Michael the youngest started to school. I know it happens, the first graduation, the first wedding and I suppose with the first funeral. The break in the family isn't coming just yet, but there is a change.
The girls are in their teens. Mary Jane is about 16 and wanting to work, Suzanne at 14 feels that her age is against her in everything, just everything. Jimmy is 12 Michael 10. This year Mary Jane felt the camp was not quite for her, and is more interested in just how she is going to make it into the Sault for the boat club dances. Suzanne is more satisfied just to swim and sit and gossip with her girlfriends. I think Suzanne has the happy faculty of contentment and Mary Jane always wants what she hasn't and would like to be where she isn't.
Two years ago when Mary Jane had her pyjama party to celebrate entry into the teens, I felt a slight hint of the breeze, but this year I am sure it is the last for our wonderful holidays at the cottage to which I have so looked forward to every year.
Mary Jane will be 16 at the end of this month. Suzanne is almost 15, and the cottage has become boring for Mary Jane. In other words no boys, the boys seem to have part-time jobs this summer, or else they are bored with it all too. Such a change from last year when every morning saw the parade of speedboats and the “gang” at the store in the evenings and bonfires up and down the beach. Suddenly I realize that the parents are all about the same age and the families are going to grow up at all the same time. Funny to have lived with that so long and to just realize it now!
But we still have this year even though we are “terribly misunderstanding parents” this Saturday night, since we have forced our daughters to stay here with us at the Pointe when all the more understanding parents have let theirs go into the boat club dance. But there must be a couple of other misunderstanding sets of parents because Betty Shaw is here with our two, and Leslie McCullough, and Laureen McLean is visiting Suzanne and therefore has to conform to our “Medieval” ideas.
The record player is going with the volume turned up too loud and they are reading one teen magazine and other romance novels “Your heart is mine” “The heart is young” “First year at senior high”, anything as long as it is labeled romance and has a couple of problem parents in it. Wilf was about to complain about the loud music and the many thousand versions of “the twist” which all about sound the same to me and to him, but not to them, when I warned him that the volume is probably to punish us for keeping them in tonight so we must suffer in silence.
Jimmy and Michael are still wonderful campers at 12 and 10. The first night we were here Jimmy asked me to go for a walk with him and we walked through the pines for a mile or so behind the cottages and then partly on the road. Just for fun we went down the path which was named the Indian trail when they were very small. I was dead tired with trying to get moved out and rushing for a week to try to tie up loose ends at work, but I wouldn't have refused him for anything. Probably next year he wouldn't be caught dead walking with his mother. Yesterday we went to the band concert over at the public park at Point des Chene. The band sat in a circle under the pine trees and people were sitting around at picnic tables in camp chairs. It made a lovely setting. They played a great many “old gay nineties” bands numbers. A real Sunday concert in the park stuff! After the concert the band had a get together at a private cottage farther up the beach. Michael and I walked for miles along the shore that we used to know years ago as the North Shore. Beautiful! Across the bay to the west is Iroquois Point where three centuries ago there was a bloody Indian massacre that gave the place its name. Looking North West along a curve of shore is Gros Cap where voyageurs made offerings to the Great Spirit of the lake, before setting out to cross its treacherous expanse. We had a lovely day with a terrific Italian meal rigatoni and meatballs and luscious tossed salad. A lovely afternoon!
But when we came home to the Kert’s we found that the ball had been rolling. Mary Jane had passed the word around and low and behold entirely without her own doing, naturally just by chance of course, and she didn't know how it happened, we were to play host to about 40 twisting teenagers for the evening. Needless to say we were not bursting with hospitality.
It was Wilf’s only evening out here in the next 10 days. I just didn't feel like being a mother hen, I am on holidays, so we went down to Mary's with the boys with the admonition that we would return. Wilf lay down on Mary’s couch at the Russell’s and promptly went to sleep, the Italian dinner and accompanying beer and Café Royale having taken their toll. I read and worried. I should have stayed at home to chaperone but the twist is amusing for only so long, if one is only a spectator. At 11pm Michael and Patrick hadn't reported in yet, they were taking advantage of a late night to go on a shoreline toad hunting expedition. Paul and Jimmy and I (the boys under protest because they were sure they had seen a wolf in the bush earlier in the evening), set out along the shore looking for them. We got as far as the back of our cottage without locating them.
I sent Jimmy and Paul into the cottage, because I couldn't bring myself to face the twisting mob. Sure enough they had been there and but had left, so back we went through the pines and they were hiding under Mary's back porch when we got there. I could cheerfully have guzzled them. Wilf was still asleep and then I really worried about our neighbours, this time because of the noise that was issuing from our cottage. Of course the two of the Rajnovich boys (next-door neighbors), were among the twisting mob so their mother couldn't complain too strenuously. I was too annoyed with my eldest to say too much when I came home, besides it is hard to know the right approach for her. Her doings are not calculated. She is impulsive and headstrong and punishing her without having her understand exactly why, is useless. When she thinks of something, want something, wants to do something, she never for a minute considers how it is going to affect other people, whether it is an inconvenience to them or even a hardship. She's thoughtless more than anything. I hope she learns, but unfortunately for her she seems to have to learn the hard way, and involve a lot of other people along the way. She gets so excited at a party or when there is a gang around. So wound up. The first time I ever saw it was when she was slightly over six months old, and we had a photographer over to take pictures. She was so excited at something strange and at a lot of attention that it took her ages then to get unwound when he left and to go to sleep.
This morning we had a small talk at least I did the talking. Last night it would have been an argument. Perhaps I got my point of considering other people, and not taking things in her own hand across. Perhaps I didn't. It is the way she does things, so often not what she does, that brings her to grief. In a couple of weeks Mary Jane will be 16.
Three years ago she celebrated her 13th birthday at a cottage down the beach at the Delayers, where we were staying that year. Her party was of the pajama variety. I had never had that experience until that night. The mothers kept saying how brave I was and I kept telling myself that it couldn't be that bad, but it was.
The boys went into town with Wilfred that night, and Suzanne and I went to bed on the porch. I would have said slept on the porch if that had been true. Sleep we did not! They played records and drank Coke, and ate potato chips and cake, and drank Coke, and danced and sang, and did everything to prevent themselves from going to sleep.
They went swimming at daybreak and at about 3 AM Suzanne and I were out on the beach with pails of water putting out the campfire, the embers, marshmallow roasts had started the fire and it flared up again in the sudden wind. I never in my life had spent such a long night. They were up, (I had thought they would sleep part of the day), early, ready for breakfast at 8 AM and on the go for the day, which wound up with a late afternoon supper to which Mary came and Mother.
I should have known that anyone entering the teens with such a noisy splash would not have smooth sailing. Her tenure was to be turbulent to say the least. As I told her today just been fun isn't enough to have fun and dates, a smart aleck always has his smartness bounce back on him, and being the life of the party doesn't mean that the gal is a success. Quite the contrary, there is a vast difference between being the character worth a lot of laughs that everyone likes to have around, but no one likes to take out.
It isn't easy for Suzanne to be growing up slightly behind her. In fact it is very hard on her. I can't think of a solution except to send them to different schools and there is only one Girls College here. Suzanne has such a nice personality of her own. I sometimes think that Mary Jane may unconsciously be afraid of that personality, in case it outshines her own. She needn't worry! They are so very different, each one having a distinct appeal, but they will have to be a few years older to realize that and to be sure enough of themselves to strike out on their own separate ways.
Meantime, back at the ranch, I am getting greyer and greyer and crabbier and crabbier, and just getting tired of being a mother, and then feeling guilty of that thought. We have just gone through the nightly ordeal of bringing up the boat. The front of the cottage is a grassy plot, and then the cement retaining wall dropping down about 8 feet to a cement peer which stretches along in front of all the cottages, with short peers dropping out at intervals. There are rocks in shallow water between the peers. The current is swift here so we can't leave our aluminum boat out, another reason, the freighters come very close to shore and the waves from them are very high, and the boat would be battered against the cement. So we wade in and heave the boat up about 5 feet onto the cement pier. It should be named the nightly spectacle. Jimmy and Michael have a roaring session when one jams the others hand, etc. I think after tonight I have resigned. Let the boat be battered!
Next-door the teenage boys are gathering. They better not look over here tonight! We had quite a spectacle of waterskiing here and in the channel. The evening is a shade of gray from pearl to dove, the water the shoreline across the river and the sky all blending! It is a lovely summer evening.
I have my hair up in fat and unbecoming rollers, and the neighbors are looking over here so I shall go inside and knit. I needn't be the scraggliest as well as the meanest mother.
Michael went fishing to the Allagash this evening and brought home an infinitesimal fish which he wanted to save to use for bait tomorrow for bigger game out in the channel, but Wilf convinced him that the seagulls needed food. These two have not overgrown us yet, but the girls have. This is such a lovely spot. Down river we can see the locks and the stacks at Algoma Steel but far enough away that they look like miniatures of themselves. We are right at the bend in the St. Mary's where the freighters make a slight turn into the upper river, so that looking up river we can see Point Louise where the river becomes Whitefish Bay. Beyond lies Gros Cap and the great expanse of Lake Superior. The “Long ship” freighters don't seem so numerous this year, or the Salties, although I have identified a Greek freighter a Swedish and a Norwegian. Masefield really meant it when he said “Dirty British freighter with a salt-caked smokestack”. Why do they have to be so beaten up looking when the Scandinavian boats shine from stem to stern?
Mary Jane just came in to announce that they were going out and around just in case someone came to call on them, between Shaw’s, and the store, and just around. When they had left Wilf asked “do you hear that”, “what” I asked “do you mean the horrible silence”, “can I bear it” said father.
Mary is here too, down the beach at their old stand the Russell’s, in a new cottage because the other one burned down over the winter. But the beach is still beautiful there and they just moved out today.
Frank comes home on Wednesday, with five of his family. We are so looking forward to his coming. Mother was so disappointed last Monday when his plans were changed suddenly, and we thought he couldn't come home. But now, they hope to arrive on Wednesday. They are driving, and tenting along the way, coming the North Superior route around the lake on the new Trans-Canada Highway.
In spite of being looked upon as terribly mean parents, it promises to be a lovely summer and I am going to savor every minute of it. It is the fifth year at the Point. Our first year was near the turn into Whitefish Bay at a tiny place called “Attles Alley”. No stove no fridge. We had to eat out of cans. The only heat was a round woodstove with huge cracks in the body of it. But we had an old rowboat boat and a wonderful time. The children were thrilled with everything and we were so much a family.
Mary was down the beach and Mary Anne was the baby. We had discovered the hard way that we wanted to be on the same beach but not in the same cottage. We tried camping together one year in the same cottage when Mary had two children Paul and Patrick. I think Pat was two years old at the time and I had the four of them. Mother came with us that year but Wilf and Jim paid only courtesy visits after moving us down in the land rover in the truck. They were wise. That was on Maskinonge Bay near Pine Island. Sadie the cat four kittens, Mother, Mary and myself and the car loaded with groceries. I shall never forget that ride! None of the adults were on speaking terms by the time we arrived because Sadie and her kittens did not take to the car ride and instead of vomiting as we feared, had a revolting looseness of the bowels that nearly overpowered us. But when their ailments became apparent we were past the point of no return and we arrived and all just about fell out of the car.
Sadie and the kittens recovered immediately and were merrily chasing chipmunks almost as soon as they hit terra firma. But not so with us! We had to unpack the mess and sort clothing and scrub children and get back on speaking terms again because after all we were going to have to spend three weeks under the same roof. That was the summer Paul refused to use the back house, and he refused to use the potty, and he just refused. Mary was frantically sure that he was going to burst his pipes when he finally gave into mothers cajoling and decided to go primitive. Then Patrick took such a liking to the place that he stuffed his and Paul's new suede frontiersman jackets down the hole and Mary and I fished them out and soaked them in the river for a few hours. But that was not all. Sadie attacked a skunk and Jimmy ran out and hugged her before we could stop him. While Mary stood at the end of the dock crooning to Sadie “poor cat” and bathing her in tomato juice, I had Jimmy up on the bluff peeling him to the skin and burying clothing and thinking very unkind thoughts about Mary’s “Sadie the poor cat”.
Then there was a day Patrick got under the house. There were wasps a nest of them in the tree in front of the cottage. Our brave men would not tackle them .Up in the hill behind the house there was a picnic table and homemade barbeque pit and we firmly believed in eating outside, all except Mother who has a horror of anything that crawls or flies. She spent her holidays clutching a tea-towel and flapping like mad at real and imagined flies. We had lovely weather, stormy rainy wet and cold. After that summer we did not attempt to holiday under the same roof again but close by on the beach.
The teenagers are back and making popcorn and are very curious about what I am writing. I have told them I am writing a story about teenagers and that I have lots of material and come to think of it I do have. They are a breed apart these teens and most fast fascinating.
I am finishing this story with some thoughts of days gone by. The day Mary Jane washed the kitchen floor for me with corn syrup and Patrick filled his ears with ozonal after eating quite a bit of it. The day we heard hissing and thought there were snakes in the insulation when it turned out to be kittens hissing at our intrusion into their new found bed!
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