(clop clop clop clop clop clop)

MAMAAA! I-A IN DA PLAYROOM! DEY GOT RHINOCEROS!

(clop clop clop clop clop clop)

(repeat)

As we walk into the main lodge dining room Evan breaks into a run, eager to get to the toys, and I call out to him in my best I-love-you-but-I-mean-business voice Evan, no running please.

Yes, says the lady at the front desk, eyeing me sternly. You absolutely MUST stop these children from running. We have had complaints.

I smile meekly and nod my head, shamed, and retreat to the library to nurse Ben. As I’m sitting there, a crotchety old fart an elderly gentleman walks up to the front desk and says to the lady

Those damn kids had better not be running around tonight. I don’t like it. You’d better sort out those people, and tell them to control their children.

She doesn’t know I’m in earshot. She wags her head up and down earnestly in shared aggravation and says

Oh, I know, I just spoke with one of them, and boy, I sure do hope they DO SOMETHING. It’s not right, those kids just running around like that. Let’s hope they’re decent people and they get those children in control of themselves.

After Ben was done I walked up the desk, fuming, and said to her, "Look — we’re doing the best we can. We have six kids under the age of three, and we are guiding them constantly. If we’re not welcome, you just let me know. But this has always been a place for families, since I was their age and for longer. We have to eat, for chrissakes. It’s not like we can duct tape their ankles together. I’ve tried. They wiggle too much."

What is it, this pariah-hood that comes alongside parenthood?

The constant hairy eyeballs shot our way, the shaking of the heads, the underhanded, judging public commentary.

It hit me badly, came near to souring what was a glorious weekend.

I have left my baby son here, I almost wanted to say. Don’t you dare make me feel like I’ve made a mistake.

And defensive, so defensive right now. The inadequacy of two — feeling like I am incapable of handling the baby plus a headstrong, wandering Evan. And the guilt of the shadow of three — feeling I would have completely fallen apart trying to handle two babies plus a headstrong, wandering Evan.

And what follows from that? An implied progression to relief, which isn’t what I feel, because I’d give anything… but the proximity of the sensation disgusts me. Cue further self-loathing.

Too close to the surface, Ben joggling in the mei tai, dragging Evan by one arm as he screeches I WANT MY DADDY! in a tangled, furious heap on the ground, breaking away sporadically for the opposite direction, or oncoming traffic, or pondfuls of sharks with fricking laser beams attached to their foreheads.

(You know, whatever strikes his fancy and/or is the antithesis of what I have the time or inclination to indulge.)

On top of this, when we’re all trying the best we can, baring our souls and guts and hearts wide open in front of all the world, you revoke your welcome.

You, who were once somebody’s baby. Or perhaps not. Perhaps you sprang from betwixt your mama’s legs clutching a bottle of geritol and a bottomless well of complaints and a righteous resentment of exuberance that doesn’t include you.

Not that all seniors are fist-shaking, jowl-jiggling, black-sock-and-sandal-wearing tyrants. Joe Public takes on a limitless array of personas, clucking disapprovingly at the disturbance to his peace caused by us breeders and our snot-nosed hooligan offspring.

We’re here because I grew up coming here every summer, back when it was wall-to-wall families, raucous and loving and wild, all sandy feet and sun-kissed tousledness. This place is special to us, all woodsmokey and crisp and kitschy-rustic.

It’s where we chose to lay our son to rest, under a gnarly tree in everglade waters accessible only to canoes and woodland sprites.

This past weekend we enticed much of Justin’s extended family to come with us, four families in all, and five toddlers, and one thriving baby. We were so touched they made the trek, and the kids took to it like a dream, delighted.

For breakfasts and suppers we took over two large tables near the entrance, at the main lodge, as close as possible to a playroom ordained by the lord of fisher price himself.

As cabin neighbours appeared Evan would turn in his seat to say “Hey LADY! I gotta DINOSAUR! My name is EFFAN! I am SEVEN!” and for the most part, folk were wonderfully chatty back to him, my rollicking, panting, I-love-the-whole-wide-world golden retriever of a son.

Then “I-all DONE!” and down he’d go with his cousins, all of them wearing a trail in the wood floor between the table and the toys.

Not tantruming, not yelling, just gleeful, rosy-cheeked, back and forth, with us parents being as considerate and as mindful as we can. Just as it was when I was a kid — minus the disapproval.

Next time, we’re bringing all the cousins — and thicker skin. Consider yourself warned. Because it's our place too, more so now than we ever thought it could be, and more than you could ever possibly imagine.

+++++++++

I saw it from a distance, unsure, a flash of white.

Walked to it through the stream in my wellies, reached into the tannin-rich water to grasp the top neck of Liam’s urn, drifted. Cracked off the last time we were here by Justin’s leatherman as I looked on, and then looked away.

I held it for a while, cool and slick with water, sitting on a log under his keeper-tree as the creek bubbled and swirled around my boots. The bright openness of the urn’s mouth lay under the surface where I sat, a match to the ceramic plug that I held in my palm.

I hesitated but then placed it back under the water next to the urn, pressed it gently into the pebbles as if planting a seed. Then stood up and thought it was just something that held him for a while, that’s all. It belongs here.

As we paddled away from this beauty he followed us from high above on the breeze, watching as his mother and father’s bright red canoe weaved through the lilypads, brown and curling dry with the coming autumn.