"No house talk," Tessa said, somewhere north of Cedar Springs on 131, about twenty minutes into our honeymoon. We shook on it. I lasted until Tuesday afternoon.
The cottage
We rented a small cottage near Glen Arbor for five nights, Monday, September 15, through Saturday the 20th, for $1,180 total. It had a screened porch, a kitchen with exactly one sharp knife and a bedroom window that looked straight into cedar trees. Mid-September up there is quiet. The summer crowds were gone, the mornings were in the high 40s, and a few maples had started turning orange at the tips, like they were testing it out.
Evenings we sat on the screened porch under a blanket and played cribbage, which Tessa learned from her dad and uses against me without mercy. I lost four nights out of five. The fifth night she was tired.
Moose stayed with my parents in Jenison. My mom sent a photo every day. By day three, the photo was Moose asleep on my old bed.
Day two, and the rule
Tuesday we did the Dune Climb. It's a wall of sand that looks short from the parking lot and is not short. Tessa went up the way she goes up ladders, faster than me and with less complaining. From the top you can see Glen Lake, which is a shade of blue that doesn't look real. We sat up there for half an hour, then ran down, which takes about ninety seconds and is the best part.
That afternoon, back at the cottage, I noticed the porch roof. It's low, maybe eight feet at the edge, and a couple of shingles near the corner had lifted. Under them, past the drip edge, I could see the black edge of ice and water shield, and I wanted to know how far up it went. So I stood on the porch bench to get a better look, and that's where Tessa found me.
"That's a house," she said.
We settled on a penalty: every house comment cost me a dessert, my treat. Over five days, I bought three.
Pyramid Point and cherry everything
Wednesday we hiked Pyramid Point, a short loop through the woods that comes out on a bluff high over Lake Michigan. It was windy enough at the overlook that Tessa held onto my jacket so she could lean out a little farther than I liked. You can see the Manitou Islands from up there. We stayed until our ears hurt.
Thursday was Traverse City, which in September means cherries in every form: cherry pie, cherry salsa, dried cherries, cherry chicken salad on a croissant and a cherry-chocolate thing I don't have a name for but would drive back for. We came home with two jars of cherry salsa and one of cherry jam. Dessert number two was a slice of pie, because I'd said something about the gutters on a building downtown.
Friday we did almost nothing, on purpose. A long walk on the beach near Glen Haven, reading on the porch, an early dinner and the sunset from a public beach where about thirty other people had the same idea and everyone stayed quiet about it. I made my third house comment that night (the cottage's front door needed a new sweep, which I could feel at my ankles) and paid for it with an ice cream bar from a gas station on the way back.
Real life, resuming
Saturday we packed up and drove home down 131 with the windows cracked. We picked up Moose in Jenison. He acted like we'd been gone a year, then fell asleep in the back seat before we were even on the Beltline.
The Cape was exactly where we'd left it, with wedding cards stacked on the counter and the guest room still smelling like Erin's shampoo. Monday was work. On Wednesday, a man with a big fan in a red nylon frame came over and measured how leaky our house is, which is about the most house-related thing that could have happened four days after a honeymoon. That's the next post. I didn't owe anybody a dessert for it.
