I sincerely hope

I sincerely hope that sometime in your childhood you were lucky enough to vacation once or twice, or maybe more often, at a lake -- "the Lake," any lake -- in a little cottage with its own pier and rowboat, and a screened porch with bare wood floors, and its own little stretch of sandy "beach."

I hope that sunrise looked like this, when you woke up in the porch with the bare wood floors.

If your cottage and your lake were in Michigan, I hope you were there in time for blueberry season -- I hope you even went and picked your own.

I hope there were a family of swans on the lake, that came to mooch breadcrumbs welcome you on your first day, and bid you goodbye on your last.

And I hope, of course, that if you did vacation in Michigan you went about on day trips sampling ciders and wines produced by local wineries. But gracious, we were remembering childhood, weren't we? Well, maybe your parents did some of these things.