Martha Martha!

The first week up at the lake, I was alone with the boys. The three of us slept in the bunkhouse, which is the old guesthouse behind the main cabin of our "compound." A few summers ago it was completely gutted and redesigned, such that there are now bunks for seven people, along with a small kitchenette, a bathroom, and a small front room. I must give my Uncle Tom kudos, there’s a lot packed into this little cabin, nestled against the ruins of the old rock terraces that my great grandfather landscaped way back when.

In the old days, we also called the guesthouse "the bug house," because the dilapidated walls, full of cracks and holes, let in every little critter imaginable. The whole place reeked of moth balls. It had three rooms, shotgun style. There was the front room which had the sunken double bed and old wood stove; and then the backroom, which I rarely dared to venture into. There was very little lighting in the back room, it had a old iron bed and a brown aluminum wardrobe for storing non-perishables. I think it also held rain gear for all the men of the family who needed outfitting for late night walleye fishing, or rainy day musky runs.

The middle room was the most feminine. It had an old antique sewing machine in it, which was draped with a lace table runner. There was also an small mirror on one wall, that I would have to stand on a chair to see into. The middle room had the semi-functioning bathroom, which was a lot nicer than the sporadically functioning bathroom in the main house.

When I was a girl I was often assigned to the guesthouse whenever  "the Polish mafia" joined us at the lake. My grandmother slept in the front room, my uncle Frank in the back room, and I shared the middle room with my aunt Claire. I slept on a small cot adjacent to my aunt’s twin bed.

Trying to sleep in the guesthouse I think was something like trying to sleep in a bus station. First off, there was the ever-present fear of being victimized. There were mice and or bats somewhere around you. You couldn’t see them, but rest assured, they were there. Then there was the 75% chance that you would wake up with a spider or tick bite. If you did, there was about a 90% chance it would be somewhere in the middle of your face.

When the wind got blowing, the cracks in the walls hummed with that spooky "old cabin in the woods" creaking and moaning. They also let in all the other sounds of the wilderness around you. Like the frogs, loons, crickets–the incessant buzzing of some rogue mosquito around your ear–the mysterious rustling of unknown animals right outside your window.

I would sleep, entombed under a maroon plaid, scratchy wool blanket (which I was allergic to), pulled up over my face and tucked in tightly along every side of my body. I couldn’t breath, but I was safe from having to watch the shadows move around the room, or the curtains blowing in the window. I would lie there frozen while my mind tried to identify every little rustle and whine. Every itch was a possible insect bite, causing me to spasmodically swat and scratch at my arms and legs. My hair seemed to crawl, as my mind obsessed about infestation. And just as my body forfeited the fight and tried to pull me into a deep sleep, my grandmother and uncle would start their snoring duet.

My grandmother snored like a man. She snored easily as loud as my uncle Frank. And when they both got going, the walls of the guest house seemed to rattle. The difference was that my grandmother’s snoring was more nasal and had a rhythmic consistency to it. You could count on it, like a ticking clock. My uncle’s was more throaty, like he was gasping for his last breath. He also had those terrifying interludes of silence where you would lie there wondering if he had a heart attack and needed revival.

I remember lying there listening to my grandmother in the front room and my uncle in the back room and counting the measures of when their snores were in perfect synch, to how many snores it took before they were syncopated. When my uncle would hit a pause, my own breath would stop, counting how many of my grandmother’s snores would take place before he started again. Sometimes my aunt Claire would call out,

"Frank! Frank! You stopped breathing!"

To which he would half wake up and yell back.

"Whuh... is it Claire?!"and begin snoring again.

Needless to say, the bunkhouse of today is a far cry from the bug house of yesterday.

As the boys and I moved in it felt like camp.

Joey slept in a bunk next to me, and Jack slept above me.

Ever night the boy’s heads would barely touch their pillows before they would be completely sacked out, their bodies cemented by the day of fresh air.

Chasing little boys all day as we swam, fished , frogged and threw rocks, left me almost as exhausted. At the end of the day I would get them hunkered down in their bunks, and it wouldn’t be more than 15 minutes before I’d collapse.

One evening as I was falling asleep, I realized my bunk was in the exact same position as my little cot in the old middle room. I had the windows cracked and a thunderstorm was roaring over our heads.  I could almost hear my grandmother’s snoring more than 30 years ago, when I realized it was the 6 year old above me– rumbling out logs, louder than the thunder.

One thing that hadn’t changed in so many years, however, was sunrise. It would wake Jack first, as he was in the top bunk, and closest to the open windows. And this is what I saw, every morning, at about 6a, as my snoring scout was ready for another adventure filled day.

It was my own little reveille, and in about 30 seconds the troops would be barking for breakfast.