Cottage Life - Original Writing

Cottage Life - Original Writing

My children’s mother and my ex-partner Jennifer, was born in at Mount

Sinai Hospital in Toronto on March 18th, 1973. Almost everyone in her

family was born in Toronto and they still live there today. Toronto

will always be her hometown but it is not Toronto that her heart

belongs too. Jennifer’s heart belongs to Belmont Lake, a little

cottage community just outside of Toronto. When she was four years

old, Jennifer and her mother moved to Winnipeg and they have been here

ever since. Shortly after we started dating she asked me to visit her

favorite place in the whole world with her. On the drive down to her

families, Jennifer told me of her fondest childhood memories at

Belmont Lake and how she would spend every summer and spring vacation

there with her family.

Jennifer’s grandfather bought the land on the lakeshore and cleared it

himself. It was the last lot on the bay at the end of the road that

led into the community. Her grandparents purchased the lot with hopes

of building a home there that they could on day retire in. They built

that home from the foundation up with a lot of sweat and even more

love. However, the little tricks that life can play on all of us,

threw a monkey wrench in that plan. Jennifer’s grandfather developed

heart problems and could not live that far away from the hospital

incase of an emergency. So in 1993 they sold the cottage. But no

matter who owns the cottage now, it will always be, in her mind, her

grandparent’s cottage and the place that she calls home. We went to

the cottage that first summer together when we went to visit her

family. She took my children and me there to see where she spent her

summers as a child. As we drove, she told me how she remembered being

a child and hating the long drive to the cottage. Jennifer told me

that for as long as she could remember, Toronto has had a cloud of