We bought a weed whacker for the cabin and used it in broad daylight.

An act of purest treason.   

For 40 years,  the cabin was governed with an iron fist, the fierce will  of my inflexible mother. The property was her domain, a family cabin in name only, though my brothers and I flocked there every year in hope of a different experience.

She’d ruled the roost at home, too, though not as effectively; she couldn’t see what happened behind closed doors.  Her regime launched all of us into the world before our wings were dry. I left at 14—but that’s another story.

Before my defection, our family took up fishing. When we tired of bony Northern Pike, damp sleeping bags, and fickle Alberta summers, we ventured to BC in search of trout. My father scoured magazines for fishing tips, and a fateful article pointed him to a  particular lake in the Cariboo. That July, in that lake, the fish were biting. I pulled the first of many foolish trout out of the depths and into the family frying pan. My parents were hooked.

Like a crack addict’s first elusive high, the fish never rose to the same rate of catchability again. Still, my family kept returning—now without their runaway daughter. The lake offered volcanic depths and high altitudes that enchanted them. After several summers of camping, they decided to buy their own pocket of lakefront Shangri-La and build a cabin. I assume they thought through the 12-hour trek from home to resort, crossing prairie and  Rockies in a dented Suburban groaning with gear, groceries, boats, and building supplies, not to mention the  depleted trip back. 

That summer, they hammered and sawed through an endless rain, but the cabin stood: a large, one-room, open design with a sleeping loft. A place where my mother could keep her eyes on everyone. 

Before her first guests unrolled their sleeping bags, my mother instituted the Cabin Rules:  edicts that governed every aspect of cabin life, from eating to sleeping to taking a dump. Later, to accommodate our growing brood, my father built a guest cabin, which came with its own set of rules. As grandchildren arrived, the Rules were extended, but never amended. The cabin also became a winter haven, where we retreated to skate, ski, toboggan, and snowshoe. And The Rules became The Constitution, upheld in grumbling compliance. We loved the cabin, but we feared its dictator.

If we dared bring a new spouse or an outsider to visit, we drilled them on The Rules before arrival. They usually thought we were joking.  A single violation, triggering my mother’s uncapped temper, confirmed we were not.

Most rules made sense, though others seemed petty. Corralling up to 16 people in close quarters took discipline. My mother determined where each person slept and which seat they took at the family table. Woe to the guest who forgot his own bedding! Dinners were doled by my mother’s rationing hand. Even an ounce of leftover milk or juice was served to the offender at the next meal before they could earn another drink. Everyone, except my vegan brother, was expected to eat everything, but not too much of anything. Cookies and treats were always rationed, unless it was New Year’s Eve, when the cookie limit briefly lifted and even the youngest were permitted sips of strawberry daiquiris. Everyone had their own drinking cup, toothbrush cup, towel, and robe. No one was allowed to complain about the Biffy, ever. The Biffy, according to my mother, Did. Not. Smell. Even when over a dozen people were using it.

My mother insisted on cooking and washing up, though female guests were expected to make salads and set the table. She refused to use paper plates, and washed our dishes in three inches of murky water, a limit she imposed even when the rain barrels were full. This  practice, like the Biffy, was not to be questioned. A similar basin of rationed gray water served for communal handwashing. The wretched towel beside it was not to be changed till the season ended.

No eating or drinking was allowed, ever, outside of mealtimes and designated Happy Hours. At some point, my father started buying pistachios, which we were allowed to munch after strenuous outdoor exertions, as long as we didn’t go crazy or sneak a handful for later.

The Rules covered hot tub dress and protocol, shoe placement, meal attendance, Scrabble trash talking, fire building, hammock behaviour, activity times, and how to dress for said activities. I was often scolded for wearing shorts when my mother deemed it was long-pants-weather. One winter, my husband was roundly rebuked for driving into town for an early breakfast when jet lag rendered him sleepless. Cabin brunch was rarely served before 11 am, and he’d been awake and hungry for hours.

Most cabin photos were taken on departure days, as each set of guests headed home, posed in front of their vehicle with our matriarch front and centre, and my father invisibly ageing behind the camera. We look happiest in these photos, eager to get away and eat, drink, and wash with gay abandon, our liberation at hand.

The guesthouse was spitting distance from the cabin. When she wasn’t cooking or washing up, my mother sat on the deck and monitored our movements, weather permitting, or  inspected the smaller cabin for infractions. A single misstep could launch a prolonged verbal assault, with a permanent record frequently referenced. My sister-in-law was eternally stigmatized for putting ketchup on her French toast.

 You don’t bite the hand that feeds you, but we learned to circumvent it. Our children slipped pieces of unwanted food onto the plates of complicit aunts and uncles when my mother wasn’t looking, to be discreetly vanished.  We brought emergency snacks, furtively scarfed in our tree-shielded cars. We snuck laptops into the guest cabin for late-night viewing.  We covered each other’s tracks, watching for towels or skis improperly hung, suitcases scattered, toilet seats not lowered.

One winter my oldest brother was scolded for letting his two-year-old play with an empty lazy Susan as we waited for a late supper. My brother snapped. There were 14 of us that year, far too many for the December confinement. We staged an impromptu intervention, confronting our mother with grievances over her inflexibility. Of course, she yielded not.

My mother’s obsession extended to the entire property, and she was Mother Nature’s gatekeeper. Nothing could be cut, mowed, axed, or weeded, except trees that ended their lives  by falling to the ground without human assistance. The land grew thick with fireweed, thistles, willow, spruce, and fir.  The lakeview was blocked by weed banks and gray willows, which stood tall in death.  Engulfed by gray and greenery, the cabin interior grew darker and more cluttered. A reflection, perhaps, of my mother’s inner landscape, the secret chaos she tried to subdue by controlling her family.

Alzheimer’s eventually took hold, bringing confusion and even greater rigidity. Until she suddenly melted. Like an 11^th hour convert,  my mother was reborn: soft and agreeable, friendly with everyone, recognizing no one. But nice, in a way she’d never been, and able to time-travel wherever she wanted to go—cabin, home, childhood on the prairies. All from the comfort of her new nursing home.

 My father made keys for each of us and mailed them out. We could visit the cabin whenever we wanted, without parental oversight. By now we were mostly in our sixties. 

We made our first cabin forays without her and began the revolution. Cleaning and decluttering the main cabin came first, exhuming smoky rooms that hadn’t seen daylight in 30 years. We’d all given too many cabin gifts over the years, and nothing had been tossed. The walls were covered with art, plaques, wreaths, and desiccated nature.  Shelves groaned with surplus crockery and containers. We obeyed the mantra, keeping only what was useful, beautiful, or unanimously deemed ‘heritage’.  

We kept the cabin rules that mattered—closing screen doors, avoiding tripping hazards– and gleefully broke the rest. I filled the hand and dish basins with quarts of soapy water, spiked with the reassurance of bleach. We sat wherever we wanted, ate whenever we hungered. We spoke honestly about the Biffy and doused the contents with ashes. My brothers could crack a beer at noon, my sisters-in-law could make tea without using the teapot, and we could all eat unlimited cookies. I wore shorts the entire time, without a single raised eyebrow. We didn’t have to stop whatever we were doing to listen to the weather report on CBC Radio, every hour on the hour. My father, when he joined us, could have a second glass of juice.

Chaos did not ensue.   

We moved our dreams outside,  replacing the rotting dock and the ancient hot tub. We widened the path to the Biffy and sanctioned a shortcut, formerly forbidden. Our ageing bladders guided us.

Later that summer, we hired a local tree specialist.

Over a span of two years, the arborist felled a dozen dead but mighty trees, ready to be chopped for firewood or simply burned in Thanksgiving bonfires, a new tradition our mother would have banned. The dead willows followed, freeing masses of unchecked weeds and undergrowth.

Hence, the weed whacker. Our mother would not have tolerated a machete, let alone a whacker. But we longed to banish the mosquitoes and reclaim the view.

I did a victory dance as my brothers took turns whacking the mosquito jungle into submission.  Armed with machetes from Peru, my nephews joined battle.

Sunlight returned to the spell-broken castle.

The view to the lake is spectacular. My brothers and I gather often, with or without our father,  spouses, and children, celebrating our new cabin democracy. No rules have been reinstated. No hearts have been wounded.

My father sighs, basking in the new, improved cabin experience—where the food is plentiful, the tasks shared, the schedule flexible, the humor good— and repeats his singular wish: if only our mother was here to enjoy it, too.

We say nothing.