Staying over Sunday night.

Long files of minivans, hulking SUVs, pickup trucks trailing bass boats with towering engines, mix it up with the wallowing rusty sedans and convoy-canyons of 16-wheelers speeding west on the 401. The sun is dropping low, hurling its hot yellow sear into their eyes and blinding them all. They’re up each other’s exhaust pipes, glaring at each other in the rear view mirror, switching lanes, shuffle-foot from gas to brake, and gas again, and brake again. Relentlessly, for hours, they feed this huge clog of traffic at the edge of the city as they pile in from places deep in Cottage Country. Down the dusty little roads and out onto the black-tops they go. And the roads get bigger and wider and faster and then they all spill out onto the Big Artery. This is where the weekend ends. The Sunday night rush to get home is on and I’m not in it. That same cruel sun is kindly back at the lake, gold-washing the shores and sparkling the pines that grip my little rock. Shadow pictures drape the cabin wall. Motor-boats are shuttling back and forth dropping off guests and sad dads who have to leave their families and get to work tomorrow. I have to get there too but I’d rather make the morning drive and be a little late. It’s Sunday evening and it’s finally getting warm. The weather’s been mean this year. This weekend was the same old cool, cloudy rain-threatening, should-we-build-a-fire-in-the-stove kind of weekend, and since the good warm air has just now arrived I’d feel mightily cheated were I to leave now. There is always a peak of noise on the lake on late Sunday afternoon, the sound of people leaving. But soon the last buzzing motor will fade up the lake and the sound across the water will be that of voices having dinner and cocktails. A last plunging splash of the pre-dinner swim, and later more splashes and giggles will ripple out from the moonless dark. Wavelets chuckle the shoreline. We’re hoping the clouds will clear later on so we can take blankets down to the dock on the open side where we might see a shooting star. There is a delicious truant quality to staying up when most others are going home, a naughty feeling. The work ethic devils within are prodding with their forks. They lose. Somehow I can swallow the guilt. The charcoal is lit, kitchen sounds are drifting about the room. The first lovely cold martini shimmers in the lowering light. Soon a salmon will hopefully not stick to the grill, but go perfectly to the plate for a change. The CBC is on the radio, the light is getting lower and warmer. I’ll work a longer day tomorrow. I’ll live a longer one today.