Whose turn is it to choose their cabin week first next summer?

They left yesterday morning, all three cars, with the usual shouting about swimsuits left on the line, and everyone hugged everyone. Kate and David stood by his car for ten minutes talking, which I watched from the kitchen window.

R. and I sat on the porch last night and again this morning and have decided three things. I telephoned each of them this afternoon, oldest first, and said the same words to each, so that there can be no comparing of versions.

One. The cabin will not be rented. Not to strangers, not through a website, not for one week, as long as either of us is alive. David's arithmetic is correct and is not the point. R. said it better than I did: "It isn't an asset. It's where we are." We can afford it. If the day comes when we cannot, we will say so.

Two. Beginning next summer, each of the three families has a week here of its own, besides the Fourth, with nobody else's children in it and the two of us either out of the way or gone home, as they like. Each week is to be claimed by March 1. First choice goes in turn: Kate in 2024, because she comes farthest, then David in 2025, then Ellen, and round again. I will keep the calendar. Ellen said, "Of course you will."

Three. The question nobody asked on Wednesday, what becomes of it afterward, is ours to answer and not theirs to settle among themselves on a porch. We have an appointment with Rebecca Stannard in the fall and will put it on paper properly. I told each of them only that it will be written down and that they will not have to guess.

David was quiet, and then said he had only been trying to help. I said I knew that, and that his father had read every line of the spreadsheet and found one error, in the propane. He laughed. Kate cried a little and said she had been a brat. Ellen asked whether her week could be the last one in July.

What I keep thinking about is R. at the cleaning bench in the dark with the hose running and no fish. He does not hold it against them. He said this morning, "They're allowed to have opinions. They're not allowed to have the cabin yet."

The loons have one chick this year.

The cabin has real internet as of yesterday. A white dish the size of a pizza box on the gable of the boathouse, and a little box in the main room with one light. R. put it up himself on the extension ladder, with me holding the foot of it and Arnie giving advice from a lawn chair. R. says it is for the cameras and the weather.

Theo and June appeared on the screen this morning from Portland, in their pajamas, and were shown the lake.

Kate has claimed the first week of August under the new rule. She was to choose first, and did, on February 27, two days inside the deadline.

Hannah is in. The word from Madison came on Thursday, in an electronic message that she forwarded to eleven people with no words of her own. Nursing, in the fall.

R. has begun, without discussion, to clear the corner of the garage where the bicycles used to be kept. "She'll need somewhere to put one," he said.

The other planning this winter is 2027. Fifty years in August. We have settled it between us: all of them at the cabin that week, and then the two of us to Norway in September, by ourselves, to Sogndal first. Astrid's husband wants to show R. a bridge. I have told R. that his passport needs looking at, and he has said that he knows where it is, which is not what I asked.

Four below. Lake Wingra is white from end to end, and there were skaters on it at dusk.