Two hours traveling now is a virtual cakewalk, but back then, a two-hour drive in the backseat of a cramped car was my own personal hell, not only because of my family’s less-than-pleasant digestive failings, but also because of my mother’s unrelenting need to pack an entire deli’s worth of groceries into every available space. Half of those drives, I had boxes of granola bars and packaged pastries pooling at my feet. I rested my head on open bundles of blueberry muffins and twisted bags of hamburger buns, stacked atop a giant cooler that sat between my brother and me in the backseat. In my lap, if I wasn’t charged with holding the dog, who threw up on cue at least every fifteen minutes, I’d be forced to hold some other item we couldn’t have traveled without, like a case of beer or box of wine. Mobility was limited, at best.

To get to Sister Lakes, Michigan, from Chicago, there was approximately ten minutes of suburbia, followed by an hour of open highway, followed by fifty minutes of pure, concentrated countryside, which is to say, absolutely fucking nothing. I’d spend what felt like hours staring at the back of my mother’s seat in front of me, shifting slightly, as much as I could, beneath the weight of whatever box of meats was crushing my thighs.

“Look at the cows!” my mother would shout every twenty minutes, and if we turned immediately and glared out the part of the window uninhibited by stacks of frozen waffles and sliced bread, we’d catch just a blurry, passing glimpse of a pasture that quickly gave way to cornstalks or blueberry bushes or whatever boring crop infests those parts of America that most of us try not to think about.

I’d always know we were getting close to the cottage when signs of modern society began to vanish, when stoplights at intersections started giving way to rickety stop signs hanging from strings over dusty roads, and gas-station pumps started looking less like gas-station pumps and more like butter-churning barrels.

The cottage itself was at the end of a winding gravel road hidden by a dense thicket of trees and brush, and was nearly impossible to see, even in broad daylight. If ever I managed to fall asleep, I’d be jerked awake by the rattle of the car lurching along the rocky street, shaking the towers of food around my face and sending one box or another tumbling to the floor. The dog would barf one last time and finally we’d be there.