The grapes weren’t ready for us. The mosquitos always were.
Leaving my grandparents’ house, we’d pile into the van for the twenty-minute drive to their lakeside cabin where we stayed during our annual Minnesota pilgrimage.
Anticipation would grow as we heard the crunch of the gravel lane and swung around the final bend. Then Dad was unlocking the gate by the light of the headlights, pulling up to park as close to the cabin door as possible, opening the van doors to start unloading.
Suddenly, mosquitos were pelting at us through the night. Surrounded by their sinister hum, we were thrown into a giddy panic as every move took on urgent significance. If we forgot something in the van, too bad. It may as well have ceased to exist until the following morning. No one was going back for it.
We crowded on the three tiers of semi-circular stone steps in front of the familiar round-topped blue door as Dad fumbled with the lock. Standing in the bright slice of light that Grandma had left on for us, the night was exhilarating and menacing; the overgrown hostas and ferns surrounding the cabin felt like a thick, deliciously dangerous jungle. When the heavy wooden door finally gave, a torrent of children and mosquitos poured through with the final child always cautious of the slam of the screen door often known to take a chunk out of sandaled heels. We were in!
Come morning, I’d explore and savor. For now, just a quick peek into each room to confirm it was all still real, and then sleep.
The cabin has always felt like a fairytale sprung into being—as if, like Rapunzel’s tower, it possessed a secret magic and had grown of its own accord. As if it had been called to life. As if the thick, luxurious hostas swaying in the breeze around the cabin’s stone walls were a kind of magic beanstalk supporting its weight of glory. As if the cabin’s survival depended on the depth of their roots, the strength of their stalks, the potency of their purple blossoms.
Its real origin sounds nearly as plausible.
I’d heard the story told by neighbors and relatives of how it had been built during Prohibition by a bootlegger from Minneapolis who had fallen in love. The young woman he loved had said that if he would give up bootlegging, she would marry him.
He did.
He drove sixty miles into the countryside where he built her a miniature castle out of stone—complete with multiple turrets, a winding staircase, latticed and circular windows, a massive handmade crystal chandelier in the great room, a lion’s head door knocker on their bedroom door, elaborate hand-forged door hinges, large open stone fireplaces, warm knotty pine ceilings, walls, and doors. Outside, from the same stone, he built raised flowerbeds surrounding the castle, a tall wishing well planter with a large iron bell mounted above it, and a winding pathway to the lake below.
He built with the quality and architecture of a castle, but on the scale of a cottage. It was elegant and welcoming, graceful and cozy, magical and profound.
With their new home complete, he went back for his bride, but in the intervening time she had moved on. She belonged in the city, she said, and she would not marry him.
She never saw the home he built for her, and he sold it without ever returning to it. It was rumored that his bootlegging fortune was still hidden somewhere on the property.
I grieved for him every summer. How he must have loved her.
Wandering among the wispy, mossy grass, listening to the whispers of the maples and firs, I would imagine his hopes and dreams and mourn for what might have been. Yet slowly, as I circled the cabin, peering attentively among the thick jungle of hostas for the whimsical figures of gnomes and fairies that Grandma had tucked in the raised stone beds that formed a moat of vegetation around its walls, mourning transformed into humble gratitude.
If she had married him, if the cabin were hers, if she had consented to be the Lady of the Lake, I would never have tasted of this deep magic.
My circuit of the cabin complete, I would stand in awe before the flagged walkway, bordered in hostas almost as tall as I was, that led to the turreted, circular tower and the grand front door, a door that we never used. I don’t know why the others didn’t, but in my mind, the front door belonged to her or if no longer to her, then to my grandmother alone, the only rightful heir of the magic. Then, in a sweeping rush of gratitude, I would ring the heavy iron bell that hung over the wishing well. It cried gladness in a deep joyous clang.
I can hear its echoes still.
Rachel Brown
enjoys sipping tea, savoring good books, and spending time outside.
She is daily inspired to live more deeply and love more fully by her husband and two children.
One Response
Love this! And these beautiful memories. I’m glad you captured the story of its creation. I always loved listening when they talked about that.