Gregg and moms excellent adventure..

Gregg and Mom’s excellent adventure…

Deciding to rise early on Sunday to make a final journey to my cabin, I call my son to catch a ride with him. He is shutting down his as well, we still have the dock and pontoon boat in the water. My decision to ride with him is purely self-serving. I need to break it to him that his pontoon boat, he left for my pleasure, is no longer tied to the dock where I left it.

A text from my cousin the evening before asks if this same boat is still in the water by any chance.  There is one loose and on the far shore, in the weedy slough, oh crap… it’s ours.

It is a beautiful morning and I picked up a wrap from Tims and a dozen doughnuts (always bring food to those you love..) it helps soften them. The bright side is that we do have a paddle boat that we can use to rescue it.

Hmmm.. last time I used that paddle boat I almost sunk it because of a missing cap on the front of it. My daughter’s boyfriend’s kids informed her they are not staying with me again because of that .. geez it’s not like they weren’t wearing lifejackets.

Thank goodness I put his quad away, I left it locked in the shop. What was to be a quick two days home turned into a whole month away from my lakeside residence.. dam! September literally flew by, my son inquired about the quad a few times but I assured him it was safe inside the locked shop.

The drive up to the lake has all the beautiful fall colours I so love, why did I waste all of September in the city? My son is in great spirits and takes the missing pontoon boat in stride when I tell him. We speculate on why it tore loose from the bungee cord moorings, hmmm…

As we turn into our cabins (we are side by side) I spot the Quad up by my back door where I apparently left it … shit!! I could have sworn I put it in the shop, ah well, he takes that with a little grin as I sputter on about my incompetence. As he goes to look for the boat I furtively check the shop door, whew.. it is locked. I send up a silent prayer, that there is a God after all. There are tens of thousands of dollars of equipment in that shop.

We set about doing our own winter close-up things when I spotted him down at the paddle boat. I informed him about the missing cap but he says it is on the front and it will be fine. We set off to rescue the boat from its lonely exile

The day is sunny and cold and the towel I brought to sit on, is now wrapped around the front of me to keep warm. The water is so full of weeds it is like mixing a heavy cake batter by hand or a heavy frosting that has to be smooth and creamy.. dammit!

I am panting like I am in labour when my son quits working the paddles .. wth? He looks at me and says “I think I am doing all the legwork!” I am too winded to reply with anything else but a whine and a grunt.. (we have only just left the dock, for god’s sake!)

Seems we are using muscles not used to this and if he is hurting.. well my whole body is silently screaming ‘Kill me now!’ I didn’t time us nor did I bring my camera, but I grunted and whined enough for several people. We were both feeling the burn .. my god those weeds had barely enough water to keep us afloat, ploughing through them was torture.

We are finally almost there and I can almost taste it when my son says “You have the keys .. right?” (F##k are you kidding me, I silently scream in my head!)  We look at each other and we cannot believe one of us forgot the keys (me). We not only don’t have keys but there is no way in hell we can tow it back with the paddle boat, even if our legs weren’t like jelly.

We can barely paddle to what looks like a decent shoreline so one of us can get out (and that is not me) to walk back to the cabin for the keys.

Well, it seems the shoreline is impregnable over here, it requires stepping into guck that will suck you into its bowels and if that doesn’t kill you, the smell will. I offer anyway, he looks at me and he’s so serious (I wasn’t) and says, “If you get sucked in up to your waist Mom, I can’t pull you out.” We won’t even go there.

We spot a thicket of dead willow branches hanging into the water and we paddle and pull our way into them (oh.. remember that cap that isn’t on the front?) and my son scoots out like a big crab and actually makes it onto shore into a thicket of brambles and wild shoreline crap.

I am impressed and so proud, he has not only scrambled ashore without falling in but he hasn’t lost his cool this whole adventure, not even once. The paddle boat is still taking on water and we had even joked about it. If I wasn’t hurting so bad I would’ve told him how my heart was brimming over with such love for him.

I want to say we lived happily ever after, but it seems like he had enough of my whining. I was relegated to the tethered paddle boat as he drove the pontoon boat back to our lot, did I mention the lost cap?

I wish I had pictures to share with you .. but along with the keys left behind were also our phones. The mental picture of him scrambling like a big crab over those dead overhanging willow bushes (he came back in the same way.. ) is etched into my memory banks and will die with me…

the end.

copyright

Oct. 7th 2016