Descriptive Essay On Lake House

Birds of Paradise

Awakened by the braying of Uncle Frank’s pick-up as it skid to a hard stop on the gravel driveway, I clasped the interior door handle and watched a pair of yelping coyotes scamper like marionettes over the tracks at the end of the cul-de-sac.
Pursued by daybreak, a bluish fog slipped like smoke through the sparse orange trees along the far side of the tracks.
I slid out of the groaning Chevy, trying my best not to kick any of Uncle Frank’s crushed beer cans out along with me.
While stammering through a succession of outdated swears, my uncle limped ahead, toward the house, fixedly glowering at it’s largest and only illuminated window.
He shook a reproachful index finger at the window, and then making a fist, rapped the wrist

Stained by nature and neglect, the house resembled an abandoned greenhouse with its many grimy windows, long, murky glass porch, sun-blistered columns, and darkened skylights.
A bolt of regret sets me off balance whenever I think back to the days when Cousin James and I could overhear the locals at the Lake House affectionately refer to the house as “The Crystal Mansion“.
The title was sustained over many lost summers when Aunt Susan would spend entire Sundays cleaning its countless windows.
Like some meditative ritual, she repetively sprayed and polished each pane until they glistened in the sun like melting blocks of ice.
There was something fluid and rehearsed in her movements as she propped the wooden ladder against the side of the house and began to climb, with the full and vividly colored skirt of her poppy-patterned dress sighing over the rungs.
While absently following this thread of nostalgia, I climbed a path of cracked stepping stones up a yellow ivy slope, through a splintering wooden gate, and into the overgrown backyard, where I nearly turned my ankle on two consecutive stones dampened by the night’s fog.