The place where time stands still

As August rolls to a lazy end and the carefree days are starting to blend ever-so-slightly with reality, I find myself thinking about summer and its traditions wrought with their magical ability to freeze time. Traditions that you look forward to, where you arrive almost as if you have never left, and without taking notice of the previous 364 days, you feel like you have been put right back into place, every last bit of it unchanged.

For us, it is a lake tucked away in Maine. To give you a general idea of the crowd - my husband's entire family - you need to know that a) he is one of four children, and b) each of them has three or four kids. The whole congregation of 24 crazies packs up what is necessary (97 pails, 46 bathing suits, 36 cases of soda, 172 cases of beer and 2 boats...just the actual bare minimum of what is needed...) and heads up to the lake that awaits us year after year. This is the thing that our boys wait for; this is their "summer thing."

"Mom, which boat will we go on to get ice cream?" (Whichever one you want.) "Who will still be wearing pajamas in the morning when we play?" (No idea, but my money's on you fools.) "Will we all play our games together?" (Without question.) "Will we make s'mores?" (By the dozens.)

We field these questions year-round (Andrew was just planning next year's pajamas this past week. These sorts of plans will continue sporadically throughout the next eleven months.) The closer we get, the more rapidly the questions are fired at us. Will we get fudge? Pops? Can we jump off the dock? Can we swim right away? Who will get there first? Will we be last? Will Grammies make breakfast in her "cavin?" How many chocolate chip pancakes can we have? Are we there yet? How about now? Now?"

When we finally (finally!) pull onto the drive and hear the crunch of the gravel under our tires, the questions stop and the amazement sets in. We step out of the car, look around, and all I can think is Man, this place does not change. The field, the beach, the dock, the cabins. It's all sitting there, frozen in time, just waiting to be brought to life by dirty little feet running wild. And in the second it takes me to process this thought, they've taken off at full speed, off on a new adventure.

It's one week a year, and the week flies by. We sit, we drink, we eat, we drink, we laugh, we drink. And just like that, it's over. And each year as we leave for home, I think A whole year will go by before I see this place again, but just as quickly, we are packing again and coming back to this place. It is so full of memories of cousins running and laughing (and fighting, sometimes, but not even as much as you'd expect.) Scary stories at the fire (why seven and eight year olds talk so much about decapitation is scary indeed) and s'mores. Little ones jumping off the dock into calf-deep water and being as excited as if it were an actual Olympic dive.

And at some point, you can't help but notice that among these tallest pine trees in the middle of the woods that have not changed even a branch in fifty years, and we grown-ups who may have aged slightly (but certainly not to the naked eye, thank you very much), the kids? Who are these tall strangers running around before us? My five year old who once allowed his older cousins to paint his nails pink? Not a trace of him in his now almost-eight-year-old self. And I dare you to try to paint his nails now. My two year old who was terrified of his uncle's boat to the point of hysteria? Now five, running full force, desperate to get his life jacket on fast enough to make it aboard before they leave. And the baby? The one who was a "mere" gigantic basketball in my stomach two years ago? The one who ventured on his very first inch of crawling last year among those cabins? He now runs faster than I do on most occasions, and never (ever!) in a safe direction. He spent this year's week plotting, along with his one-year-old cousin, how to best enter the lake unobserved by us fun-ruining, good-for-nothing adults. I have no doubt that next year, they will actually steal one of the boats.

So as we adults relax around the fire pit under the stars, day after day over the course of the week, year after year with our families, amused to tell our same stories for the sixtieth time and laugh and laugh and laugh, as if it were the first time any of us have heard them, we are surrounded by the next generation who are running and laughing (and fighting, sometimes, but not even as much as you'd expect...) and just for a moment, I can actually see their stories materializing in the crisp Maine air, something you can almost grab on to and send ahead to another campfire twenty years from now.

And who knows? Maybe among those trees and that lake and those cabins, we will sit with them as they tell their same stories and laugh and laugh and laugh, all the while marveling at how much they have grown and how much has changed in this place where nothing changes at all, in this place where time stands still.