Saying Goodbye to Memories to Make Space for New Ones

We sold our cabin today. I spent the weekend packing up twenty-one years of cabin life and unpacking unmet expectations and memories. You can understand why filling those plastic bins took forever. And a lot of red wine.

When we turned over the keys to a young family with two kids and a boat, we also handed over some mountain-sized expectations. Our sweet little cabin, modeled after the red and white-trimmed stugas of Sweden, did not give us everything we wanted. But her honest simplicity showed us the true nature of things.

I spent an entire summer building a stone patio in the backyard. Each wheelbarrow full of slate stones hauled over from the neighbors was a promise to myself that I would become someone who enjoyed hosting large gatherings. I pictured friends sitting around a fire roasting marshmallows and hot dogs. Maybe someone would play a guitar. We’d sing songs to usher in the stars so profuse and dazzling as to require their own show. 

Those evenings rarely happened.

Our cabin came with a boat slip, so, of course, we bought a boat. A sleek little 16-foot motorboat perfect for spending afternoons water skiing or heading to a private cove with a cooler and some tunes. We can all agree that the best friends are those who have a boat, right? Only my dear husband did not grow up around the water. Our little skiff would suddenly become a 160-foot yacht whenever we had to put her in the water or take her out. When the captain is stressed everyone else gets a little nervous, too. We sold the boat.

Just in time. The reservoir, which had been a pristine lake when we bought our cabin, now looks more like the river it once was. Climate change and the local power company both conspire to lower it more and more each year. By July 4th our boat slip is on dry land. 

Sitting snugly in the forest between two mountains and the reservoir, I dreamed that our cabin would be where we’d spend weekends, hiking, swimming, boating, and cross-country skiing with our kids. It would be a place that would bring the family closer together. It was never that.

The cabin was always only my husband’s and mine. Never our kids. 

It’s not their fault. We decided a great way to introduce our family to our new one-room, off-grid cabin was to spend our annual August vacation there. We picked up the keys and packed the car. What were we thinking?

It rained every day. After a couple of hours, the constant drum beat of raindrops on the tin roof had all the romantic appeal of water torture. The first night, my nine-year-old daughter opened the shower door and screamed. A large black spider stared up at her, his body comfortably splayed over the entire drain. She never approached the shower again. 

Our son has equally terrifying memories. He was the first to leave his own birthday party, holding a towel to his bloody head while my husband drove an hour and a half to the emergency room. He’d been the victim In the kind of party game that eleven-year-old boys dream up when the forest is their playground. Our son is happiest in front of a computer rather than in the woods.

My husband and I, though, walk away with a measure of sadness. 

For us, the place was a respite. We loved swimming in the reservoir. Diving into the clean, deep water made me feel alive; as if I was twelve years old again. 

In the summer we tramped up to Mt. Adams for huckleberries. In the fall we roamed the nearby woods searching for chanterelles half buried under loamy soil. Afterward, we gathered with the other cabin owners around a fire eating bowls of lamb stew. 

We loved sitting by the fire in the evening, a glass of whisky in hand, reading by the light of propane lanterns. Our best conversations took place as we looked up from our books. Conversations that we never took the time for at home amid busy schedules and distractions.

It was quiet. And we loved the quiet. Our kids did not.

In more recent years, cell service has arrived. Ironically, although the reservoir powers a hydroelectric dam, electricity has not. If we walked to a certain “magic rock” we could even get an internet connection. We had just enough bars to make us feel a part of the outside world, but not in the thick of it. 

We made the cabin ours. 

We pulled dark wood planks and thick rope from off the walls (No. We didn’t understand it either ). A hundred pounds of birdseed, and as many mice, rained down on us. Our neighbors thought they were feeding the birds not the local rodent population. We painted walls white and covered others with light pine boards. I painted furniture Dutch blue and filled the spaces with candle holders, wooden carvings, and woven runners collected over many visits to my Swedish relatives. The place was the definition of hygge. We loved it so much that one year we lived there for four months.

For a place that holds so many memories, why did we sell? 

I’ve learned that I can hold two diverse thoughts at once, twisting them into a braid of bittersweet.

I can love a place and also know that it is time to leave.

I can be okay with unmet expectations, realizing that hoping things will be different stands in the way of what truly is.

I can turn over the keys of our little red and white cabin in the woods, knowing that I’m not shedding memories. I’m creating space for new ones.