When I was a kid, my uncle and aunt and my grandparents bought a house in northern Wisconsin, on a lake surrounded by woods. We would drive six hours from Chicago to get there, pulling into the gravel driveway and unloading our week’s supply of bathing suits and summer clothes. There was a small tub of water by the front door to rinse off sandy feet, and the screen door was a bit rickety from all of the slamming as kids ran in and out of the house. Inside, it was small. Two bedrooms, and a bathroom that wouldn’t fit three people, let alone a wheelchair. Not that any one of us had a wheelchair in mind all those years ago. We slept on the floor, on couches, some of us got beds, but I don’t remember how that worked itself out. We watched VHS tapes on a very small old TV in the living room, and played dice and Yahtzee at the big wooden dining table. There were Friday fish frys in the nearby town, and trips to the sweetshop, and later to a winery on top of a hill, where everything basically tasted like grape juice.

We went every year when I was growing up, and I even went up a few times in college. I announced my pregnancy to my grandma and grandpa at that wooden table. When my grandpa got sick, we continued to go to the lake. He could still shuffle down the stairs and the winding path to the water, even with his oxygen tank, but he had to take a break halfway down, so someone (my uncle?) built him a bench. My sister got engaged on that bench. Read More>