I knew this vacation was planned years in advance. For at least five years before the event my mother dreamed of family togetherness. Mom and Dad would take us all somewhere exotic to celebrate their fiftieth anniversary, which hopefully would involve lots of little ones and fun memories. By the time the Galapagos Islands, Fiji, the Land Between the Lakes was crossed out in favor of “up north” so the guys could go fishing, I didn’t have to dither long about deciding whether or not to take along my computer. My publisher had agreed to look at the full manuscript for a romantic mystery I’d written a couple of years ago, and it needed some hefty editing. With hubby gone on family business a few days of the planned vacation week, the youngest grandson gone a few days & the next oldest sleeping until noon; just our two kids married without children, and the youngest son arriving only the last day, I figured I’d have plenty of time to edit.

Wrong-o.

The second day I walked up to the rented cottage from the pier and stepped over names etched in the cement steps. The names called to me. Not the individual ones, but the idea of them. I looked across the lake and wondered about the family who’d done that – marked their territory that we were now invading. Did they have any secrets? Did they have any tragedies? Did they boat, laugh, love, or go to bed mad? Have parties? Dance, chase the loons, fish, dare each other to swim to islands? I went back to the pier and stared into the water while scenes came and went. The perfect opening. A boy with no name. A granddaughter. A grandfather with secrets.

I opened my computer and began to jot characters, settings, plot notes. I asked my sister in law and daughter in law and late-rising nephew about story lines, episodes. Wisconsin’s great north woods has a lore which includes gangster legends. The 1930s and 40s drew me in and clutched my imagination. A child hiding under the weeping willow fronds, a grandfather’s road rally, a missing starlet and a mystery woman whose name should never have been sealed in stone reappears after decades away. Who is she, really? Did she know what happened to the starlet? Or could she keep secrets too well.

And so it goes.
Editing, schmediting. Who can go back to an old story with a fresh one waiting?

It’s my mother’s voice, though, echoing: “finish what you start.” She didn’t make marriage last fifty years on just good cooking, now, did she?

Lisa
Author of Meander Scar: a story of finding home, now available

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