The Last Time

But the thing about the last time
Is you don’t know that it’s the last time ’til it is

The Last Time, Tenille Townes

For most of the last decade or so, Rob & Sue have opened their cottage to our gang for a weekend every summer. Often that’s meant fitting 21 of us around the table – 10 adults and 11 kids (plus a dog or two). Four years ago was the last time the younger generation joined us. Trying to corral them all together now would be near impossible.

Driving up to their cottage this year, I started thinking about ‘last times’ and how they happen without us knowing it…the last Mother’s Day with my mom, the last Father’s Day with my dad, the last Christmas we had together as a family, the last time I hugged my sister-in-law. We rarely know when it’s the last time we’ll laugh with someone or the last sunset we’ll watch or the last Canada Day we’ll celebrate. Another reminder of why it’s so important to appreciate the moments we’re in while we’re in them.

We definitely cherished our time at the cottage. It’s always a weekend of great food, great music and fun times, and this year was no different. The weather cooperated well on Friday and Saturday, for boat rides, kayaking, swimming, seadoo-ing and delicious meals on the deck, but by Sunday the smoke from the Quebec fires had moved in and the air quality was pretty poor.

When it was our turn to make dinner, Murray asked what kind of music we wanted to listen to and he wasn’t too impressed when Ray chose 80s music (Murray’s more of a Blues guy), but he found a playlist and soon everyone was a hoppin’ and a boppin’ and a movin’ and a groovin’ to everything from AC/DC to Madonna, the tunes we all grew up with.

We drink less than we used to, go to bed earlier, and spend more time talking about our health, but the joy and laughter hasn’t diminished and the friendships have only deepened with time.

Back in Brighton, June was busy with visitors – cousins from Winnipeg, friends from Ottawa, my sister, and a lot of Warm Showers guests. We average several requests per week to host Warm Showers cyclists. So far this year, we’ve hosted guests from France, Germany and various parts of the US and Canada, most of them traveling solo. The type of people who cycle across the country on their own tend to have pretty interesting stories to tell, so we’ve met some really cool people doing this. When we start to feel ‘peopled out’ (as Nick used to say), we just turn off our profile for a few days.

Ray will take his turn as a Warm Showers guest when he does his fundraising cycle in September. We’re about two-thirds of the way to our goal now (which has been raised to Nick’s desired amount of $10,000). I was thrilled to see that a few readers of this blog – who don’t even know us – generously donated to the cycle (partly I was just thrilled to know that I have ‘readers’, but I was also very pleased that they chose to support our fundraiser, so thanks readers!)

A few people have mistakenly assumed that Ray is doing an organized ride. It is ‘organized’, but just by Ray for Ray. He started planning this when Nick first got the all-clear but it was delayed by covid, so it’s a personal mission, not an event that he signed up for [link: Ray’s Great Lakes Cycle 2023].