“Are we almost there?” I wondered as stout red barns and rickety mailboxes streamed past while we motored north on a bright August day. Our destination, the sleepy town of Caseville on Lake Huron in Michigan’s thumb region, was two hours away. A straight shot on M-53 from metro Detroit, Papa had the route memorized and didn’t need a map since we had been visiting the same spot for several summers in a row. Me and my older brother and sister shared the backseat of the Ford Country Squire station wagon. My mom always looked collected in the passenger seat, sitting erect, her chestnut hair pinned in a neat updo. Her window was open to cooling breezes as tendrils of hair swept across her cheeks. The cargo area was packed to the brim with our vacation supplies: a green Coleman cooler big enough to transport food for a whole week, beach paraphernalia, and scuffed American Tourister suitcases, the ones featured in a TV commercial where a gorilla in a cage slams and stomps on a brown suitcase to demonstrate how sturdy it is. Our three cousins and their parents would be meeting us there, as was the tradition.

The Bella Vista Inn was an ordinary, low slung motor hotel like most other types of lodging you would find in the late 1960s, but to me it was a castle. It boasted a huge swimming pool, shuffleboard courts, a restaurant, and best of all, a wide sandy beach where the clean, cold waves of the mighty Lake Huron crashed over coarse sand. The inland lakes in metro Detroit were never as clean, clear, and inviting as the Big Lake. They were more of a murky olive green and their beaches were always crowded. The shoreline at the Bella Vista had plenty of room to spread out and this was where I first began to appreciate the splendor of the Great Lakes.

We always took a suite with a kitchenette so our moms could cook most of our meals. Sometimes we were in the main building and sometimes we had a cottage. As soon as we settled into our rooms and exploded our suitcases to find and don our bathing suits, we raced to the beach to carouse and body surf in the lake. If the lake was restless with big waves, so much the better. A playground slide had been dragged into the water and after lubing it up with splashes of water, we slid down over and over, landing with a plop and scurrying out of the way so the next person could slide down. We held our noses with our fingers and sank down to sit cross legged on the sandy bottom. Which one of us could hold our breath the longest? We did handstands, our legs poking out of the water like knobby reeds. We doggy paddled and splashed each other until our finger tips turned into prunes. Tired and happy after a good long romp, we wrapped ourselves in our beach towels and slumped onto the sand to dry. Sometimes our mothers sat nearby attired in colorful one-piece swimsuits, big straw hats, and chunky sunglasses.

Most of my memories of those languid days are pleasant, although a couple of years I managed to come down with a fever and sore throat. My mom had to take me to a doctor and get me some pink medicine in a bottle. I lay in my bed, achy and feverish, while my siblings and cousins frolicked without me. But mainly the memories sparkle with fun and laughter, like the time a teenage girl jumped into the pool feet first and unknowingly dislodged her breasts from her bikini top. She took several steps in the water before realizing she was completely exposed to all the tittering young people lounging poolside. Or the time someone built a sand sculpture at the shore to look like a romantic couple in beach towel bathing suits lying on the ground next to each other. Or the time Papa found a fish market and bought many pounds of fresh lake perch, his favorite seafood, which our moms fried and we ate two nights in a row. In most of the group photos that one of our dads snapped, my brother is making a V sign behind someone's head, the classic bunny ears prank. 

Those memories became especially poignant after we stopped visiting Caseville when my mother died of cancer. She was only 39 and I had just turned 10. Her death bespoke a jagged black dividing line. Thereafter I reflected on what my life was like before and after she died. One day I was a regular kid with my mom waiting for me in the kitchen after I walked home from the school bus stop. The next day she was a spirit, her dresses still hanging in my parents’ closet, her high heel pumps standing upright in the shoe rack like wardrobe sentinels. The saucepans and skillets, Tupperware containers, dinner plates she bought at Sears, everything still bearing her fingerprints, all idle from her absence. Papa did his best to carry on, cooking sausage and tater tots for dinner and staying home with me when I was sick. He even took us on a few exotic vacations. Those trips – to the Grand Canyon, to Acapulco, Mexico – were black and white simulations, where we all moved stiffly, trying to replicate something that no longer existed. It’s hard for a family to function when one vital person is missing. But the heavy demarcation gradually lost its significance as the years slipped away and my memories of her became indistinct, like boats receding on the Lake Huron horizon.

One blustery November weekend when I was a college student in Ann Arbor, I decided to embark on a road trip to Caseville. I hadn’t been back there in more than a decade. I don’t remember what inspired me to revisit my childhood vacationland, especially in such raw weather. These were the days when gas was cheap and I enjoyed driving fast on the freeway and on lonely stretches of highway just for fun. I suspect I was feeling exam fatigue and needed a break from my studies. The trip wasn’t much farther than it was driving from Detroit and as I put miles behind me, I relaxed and felt soothed by the monotone oyster sky.

When I reached the outskirts of town, I tried to remember familiar landmarks as I slowed down to study the stores and businesses. There was the IGA market although we didn’t shop there as my mom packed all our food from home. Where was the place where we rode those fun bumper cars? It must have been farther out of town. I wended my way through downtown and not far past the city limit on M-25 I spied the Bella Vista sign. The motel was closed at this time of year but I parked in front, zipped my parka up all the way and pulled the hood over my head. A brisk wind was blowing in from the lake and I could hear the waves crashing before I could see them. 

Hands jammed in my pockets, I walked around the building and strolled toward the beach. The pool was empty and shut up tight. Stacks of beach chairs teetered nearby. Summer resorts in winter are forlorn places, the ghosts of swimsuit-clad guests lurking in the windows, all obscured by drawn curtains. The Bella Vista was in hibernation and would soon see snow raking over the lawns and ice floes forming in the lapping waves. Shivering as the wind forced itself down my neck, I wandered down to the beach to have a good long look at my favorite spot. Whitecaps rolled and crested through the churning surf and I dodged to avoid getting my shoes drenched. Not one other soul lingered all up and down the beach. I was alone. When I turned to look back at the motel grounds, there stood a homely clapboard building, saggy in spots, a mildewed swimming pool, and not much else. I marveled at how time had shrunk this magical place I had carefully preserved in my mind's eye. Being there on a leaden day, benumbed with cold, and after so many years, drained the charm and dreamlike quality of my memories. It had towered in size and stature and been the starring attraction of carefree childhood summers. Now it was just an average old motel and I was trespassing on the grounds.

Still, seeing my treasured childhood inn as an adult was akin to looking through a View-Master, a hand-held stereoscopic viewer popular in the 1950s and 60s into which you insert cardboard discs embedded with transparent color photos. While arctic blasts buffeted me and giant swells pounded the shore, I could look through the lens of time and see a girl diving into friendly waves, gleeful, living in the moment. She was laughing with her cousins, squinting in the endless summer sun, and content with the certainty of two parents looking after her. I think I’ll hang on to the Disney version of my intact family on a summer beach vacation at the fabulous Bella Vista. I'll safely cache this vision in a corner of my mind and label it "happy childhood," where I can easily retrieve it and spend time with it for a spell whenever I want. 

Yes, we are there. The Bella Vista welcomes us. We’ll always be there.

Luise Bolleber earned her MFA in creative nonfiction writing from Lesley University. She recently published a biography, One War Ago, about her father’s World War II experiences. She was a contributor to The Organic Movement in Michigan book and has been published in several journals and magazines. When not journaling, you will find her gardening or meandering the shores of Lake Michigan with her dog.