The Cottage in Spring:

A March Memory

Note: An earlier version of this essay appeared in a blog I called “A Cottage on Lake Michigan.” Though my family’s beloved summer cottage, built in 1905, no longer stands, every square inch is preserved in memories—both mine and the memories of those who are gone, who shared the cottage with me and whose memories I aggregate.

Spring arrives at the cottage in a series of heartbreakingly false starts. No matter how warm the February thaw, or what the groundhog may or may not have seen, this time of year winter is always too long in getting gone.

By the end of March, we’re a little stir crazy from watching the snowdrifts on the back patio wax and wane. Unlike the icebergs outside our front windows, the back patio snowdrifts only get tougher and more determined the longer they hang around. Periodic snowfalls soften and pretty up their icy edges, but we’re not fooled.

But then, of course, spring comes.

It arrives with the perfect alignment of daylight length, sun angle, and elbow grease. We step outside one morning, and it hits us—we smell the trees. Cardinals name this wha’cheer. We grab our serious metal shovels and all day long attack the drifts, launching the icy chunks into the air and cheering as they land, burst open on the sunny pavement, glitter awhile, and then melt, baby, melt.

Clocks may spring forward; robins show up without reservations (and the audacity to look aggrieved); and Peeps elbow Valentines off the grocery shelves; but until we’re rid of those grizzled snowdrifts we can’t kiss winter goodbye.

But when they’re gone, they’re gone. And even when the last snowstorm comes (March’s or, as likely, April’s), we’ll snub the tumble of winter boots by the back door and strike off through the drifts in our tennis shoes. Let it snow. The Winter Cottage has become the Cottage in Spring once the back patio snowdrifts are gone.