You Can’t Go Back

In my early 30’s I lived in a boat house on a small private lake in MichiganI called it “camp”Which is how I squared myself with copious spider populationIt was the early days of the internet and I’d done a keyword search using “charming”And it wasDown a ½ mile-long drivewayAround the side of the main housePark by the magnolia treeFollow the stone path to the 40 stepsThe entrance of the house sat atop another 20 steps down to the waterIt was about 700 square feetKnotty pine walls (another reason I called it ‘camp’)A 30-foot porch I could fish off ofBut really I just threw the fish blueberries and watched their disappointmentThe weekend I moved in, a former contact calledI answered the phone, “Paradise, may I help you?”He was offering me a job to run a new Australian office of his web design company“Thank you,” I said, “and if I hadn’t been serious with my salutation, I’d be all over it”It was so beautiful, I never wanted to leaveSo I asked my boss “what would I need to do to work from home”She answered, “you’d need to get another job”But 6 weeks later, I ruptured a discAnd whadayaknow, I couldn’t drive for 3 monthsI had been traveling a lot, so now my colleagues had to come to meCamp hosted many meetingsSeveral colleagues slept on my porch instead of their hotelWe would swim off the dock to separate the work day from the eveningThe environment was so spectacularI could invite anyone over at any timeWhether I had food or wine to offerAnd feel utterly confident that they would be delighted to simply be thereUsually, I could throw something togetherBut it was really an afterthought.Until I got marriedSuddenly, I started freaking out about whether I had enough wineOr adequate snacksIf the house was clean enoughOr I’d swept the stairsWTF?It took a few times of this happening to realizeI’d changed the tapeI’d had the carefree single woman tape in the playerAnd now I had the wife tapeAnd that one was full of anxiety about how the details reflected on the state of my unionI had to do it right or everyone, including and especially me, would think I was doing it wrongAnd the craziest part was that even finally realizing what was happening did not end the dynamicIt took concentrated effort to set down the anxiety that felt necessaryAnd it was only the magnitude of the beauty of the environment that would pause the tapeReminding me to enjoy the privilege of sharing the space with people I enjoyedAs time went by, camp became less enchantingThe roof leaked. The landlord weirdly wouldn’t fix itTucker designed an utterly hilarious indoor gutter system that channeled water into 3 separate bucketsBy the time our daughter was bornWhat was once magical suddenly felt potentially dangerousCircumstances changedWe ended up moving 1,000 miles awayAnd I had to continue to slowly debug wife.exeIn a New England bungalowI went back to camp about 3 years later for a visitIt was every bit as beautiful as I remembered itI couldn’t resist jumping in the lakeI got entirely tangled in seaweed This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fallingtenderly.substack.com