Leaving the lake where we spend an extended week every summer, is harder and harder on me each year. I’ve been going to that lake since I was seven. It has not changed a lick. The four cabins were purchased by the same folks who own them today-the year I was born.

I took about a fifteen year hiatus-from around age 17-32 not knowing I’d ever go back to this gentle childhood oasis.  I rediscovered it, in the dead of a Maine winter, at my mom’s suggestion when I yearned to get away on a writing retreat in the warmer weather. This was over ten years ago. Knowing I didn’t need my own cabin for a week I came up with a wild idea to host a retreat of sorts for fellow creatives and lake lovers the following summer. Within weeks of putting it to paper, and emailing friends the cabins were full.  Then for the next five years the concept grew, and I hosted an artist-musician-writer-creatives retreat for over twenty one week each summer.

We spent the day on our own doing our artsy thang, and then met at the dock at 5:00 for appetizers,  wine, and conversation. Each night a different participant had the dock and dinner prep duty. We shared two cabins, and countless hours of laughter, revelations, insights, struggles and successes.

To this day, aside from Sam and Marcel, I consider what I organized  and facilitated there to be one of my greatest accomplishments. Several albums, manuscripts,  and gallery shows had their humble beginnings there. Over twenty women spent at least a half week there at one point. My inner Left Bank Parisian Salon Hostess was rediscovered on that dock.

That lake  (also known to those in the know as “the Lady of the Lake” ) is also where I prayed for an answer to this question; “Am I ready to begin a family on my own through adoption?”

The Lady of the Lake is also where or to whom  I prayed for an answer to this question; “Am I ready to attempt to bring a child into my life with the help of a donor?”

This time I asked  if I was ready to merge my life, and the lives of my children with another in the near future? She is always so wise in her decisions about my future. As I swam with the loons, and watched an eagle carrying a large branch overhead, I seemed a little closer to knowing what might be next for all of us.

A few pictures included below to help you see why this place is so insanely magical to all of us now.  Of the ten days there I spent about half of them alone with the boys. It was what we all needed to reconnect with ourselves, each other, and the natural world. Sam’s swim lessons over the past several years have clearly paid off, and Marcel’s caution around the water was reassuring actually. The hour of “quiet time” every day meant we all had time to read (Sam read TWO full length graphic novels), paint, mediate, and build with blocks, or sticks and pebbles and other discoveries. There was no television, or electronics except my camera and phone.

It was a very sweet gift to share the place with Shrek too. He completely got it. He often does.

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