MEMOIR
Saying Goodbye to the Family Cottage
Using household artifacts and a tiny old film camera, I recreated the past in my basement
BY CHRIS GOODYEAR
Published 6:30, August 29, 2024
“The girls won’t let me throw any of it away.” He’s right, we won’t. My sister and I won’t let my dad get rid of anything we kept from our old family cottage. For the first twenty-five years of our lives, we spent all our summers up at Little Hawk Lake in Ontario, in the company of family and dear friends. It was a rustic place with teal-green siding and mismatched furniture, without a phone, TV, or indoor bathroom, and it could be reached only by boat. It was a place of refuge and stillness where we had time and space to become ourselves. I think of it as my real home.
My sister and I were devastated when the cottage was sold, and for the past thirty years, we’ve been faithfully guarding the cottage artifacts. Why? Why keep it all? I think we’ve been holding on so we could feel like the loss was temporary, that we would someday get a new place and put it all back together again. But that hasn’t happened, and I’m not sure it ever will. Getting rid of everything was out of the question, but keeping it locked up in a box didn’t feel right anymore either.
I think what I’ve been looking for is a way to go back and experience these things in their old familiar settings once more . . . and maybe to say goodbye, in my own way.
I bought some 110-format film and a tiny camera from the 1970s, and I recreated parts of the cottage in my basement. A wall of painted and aged green siding, stained pine panels, a window frame, a small deck and curtains—they all served as backdrops for a series of cinematic still-life photos of our cottage remnants. This is how I remember it.
