At Our Cottage, 1968

During the summer after my sophomore year at college, I got a job trimming small balsam fir trees that were being grown to become Christmas trees. The tree farms were not far from a small cottage that my family had on a small Midwest lake. For those who don't know, lakes like these are wonderful places for families to spend the summer. Cottages large and small circle the lake, the water is great for swimming, screen doors can be heard slamming. And, I was to learn that my cottage was to become wonderful for something else.

One weekend I returned to my home which was about an hour's drive from the cottage. I spent Friday and Saturday nights with three high school buddies also home for the summer. When I got ready to return to the cottage on Sunday afternoon, my mother said that she would like to spend the week out there as well. My father had to work and my two teenage sisters had no use for a place so far from their friends.

I would not call my mother a beauty just as I would not call myself a stud in any way. She was 5' 3'', probably weighed around 130, and wore glasses. She had a simple hair style of two braids wrapped around her head and pinned. When she wore a dress, it was plain usually buttoning all the way from hem to throat. She had been a school teacher when women did that through two year normal schools.

As we drove out, we talked about how my sisters were doing and what she was doing with the local group of the League of Women Voters. Eventually, I asked her how my dad was. She hesitated a bit, obviously deciding just what she wanted to say.

"Well, he's your father you know. He hasn't changed a lot."

"So, still pretty opinionated and spends all of his time working in the garden?"

"Yeah, that's about it, I guess," she said with resignation.

"Mm mm, so what do you want him to do more?"

"It would be nice if he were more spontaneous. Take me out to dinner once in a while. You know when we were first married I signed us up for a square dancing group and he went willingly enough but I just didn't get any sense that he really liked it. He wanted to do things with me but there was just no real enthusiasm."

"Yeah, he's pretty comfortable just working around the house, you know, gardening, fixing the car."

"Yup, that's your dad," she said and then after a moment she added, "I just wish he also would take his time when we're together."

Well, that was an unexpected thing to hear. "Have you talked to him about it?"

"I think that I've let him know and it's like he doesn't really get it. As if he read about sex in a book, does it step by step and then he's done."

So then I really didn't know what to say and we were quiet for the rest of the ride. I know now that for incest to occur between a parent and even their adult child something must be missing from the parents' relationship that isn't getting fixed.

We ate supper and afterwards my mother washed the dishes and I dried. As we stood next to each other at the small counter where the sink was, our bodies bumped from time to time and I felt a different closeness to her. We sat in the living room reading for about an hour and then my mom said she was going to bed. Normally our good night kisses were pecks on the cheek but when she bent down, I smiled and raised my head and our lips met in a short, soft kiss. And then she did something that I think looking back really started us towards our relationship being sexual.

The door to my parents' bedroom at the cottage was off the living room. As she got to the door, she stood with her back to me, let her hair down, and then turned her head looked at me and smiled and said "good night". When I got into bed shortly after, I still had that image of her in my head. I touched myself and got instantly very stiff. Since the walls in the cottage were thin, I masturbated as quietly as I could. I fantasized that I stood behind her there in the living room and lifted her house dress. She bent over and placed her hands on the small book case that was against the wall and I entered her holding her hips. It was the first time that I had had an incestuous fantasy. I came so hard that I could not help grunting, I hoped softly enough not to be heard.

So, this was the first stage, the first act in the play of my mother's and my increasingly intimate relationship. Over the next two days, I know that I became more attentive and caring than I usually was. We went swimming in the evening and even though my mom's suit was very modest, I noticed what her body was like. Women in the sixties did not work out and we ate things without much attention to their fat content. My mom was certainly not fat but as I said 'soft'. Her thighs had substance. Her bottom was nicely round and her tummy had what is called a pooch. A very nice term, I think, for something soft and inviting. I imagined caressing it. And her breasts had substance also. I had discovered that the wall between my bedroom and my parents' bedroom, made only of fiberboard, had a hole in it. I watched one night as my mother undressed. Her breasts hung, she was after all 48 and had had three children, but her nipples, large and dark brown, still pointed out. I got into my bed and again masturbated as quietly as I could imagining being between her legs and having her arms holding me tightly.