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Cottage ownership never seemed in the cards for me. As the offspring of an immigrant on my father's side and an army brat on my mother's, the idea of owning one was out of the question. With their early lives shaped by moving and disruption and their adult lives devoted to laying down roots, a cottage was simply another place to move to and, for my parents, that was against the point.

Cottage life, then, shouldn't have been in my blood, but most summers, I asked the same question: "Dad, can we get a cottage?" Summers tended to be lonely in my small northern Ontario town. Friends were scattered to the winds, the unfortunate ones sent away to summer camp and the fortunate few doing what I envied most.

"Why you want a cottage so bad? Don't we have enough work to do around here as it is?" my father would ask, his West Indian accent kicking into overdrive. "Besides," he'd say, his chin thrust forward in defiance, "where you plan to find the money to pay for it?"

Like most first-generation kids with an itch to scratch, I learned to let it go. I deferred the dream. I got older. Joined an outdoors club in university. Accepted the occasional invitation to friends' cottages. Went camping. Spent a few lost weekends in the wilderness. Met a man who grew up on the water. Fell in love with him. Introduced him to my parents. He still wanted to marry me. So we did. Had kids. Bought a house. Took vacations.

Then one summer he said it: "I think we should buy a cottage."

I should have been happy. I was 41 and my childhood dream was finally coming true.

But I wasn't. I couldn't turn off the voices in my head. The loudest of which had a strong Caribbean accent.

My father arrived in Canada in 1942 with a suitcase full of new clothes and a plan to become a doctor. He modified his expectations and ended up with a degree in engineering and an acute fear of poverty, the latter acquired after working on the railroad four summers in a row for just over minimum wage, the only job a man of colour could get back then.

Like his love for music and his distrust of politicians, my father passed on his relationship with the almighty dollar to his children. Money was a necessary tool, we were told. But there was a catch: Its strength was only as effective as how much of it you were able to keep locked away in the bank. You never knew what the world was going to give you, was his mantra.

Debt was to be avoided at all costs, which meant that everything from groceries to furniture had to be paid for with cash. I can still remember the look of shock on the salesman's face when my father pulled out a roll of money the size of his fist to pay for the last car he ever owned.

And credit cards? My father's distaste for these was best demonstrated on a hot July afternoon in 1987 after his first (of many) strokes. As he waited for an operation that would help relieve the pressure on his brain, he had his thoughts on his favourite topic. With his face frozen on one side and his hand shaking, he wrote a cheque for $3,000 and handed it to my sister.

Then he turned to me, gripped my arm and whispered: "Promise me you won't ever get a Chargex card." My father was headed toward an operation in which the odds he might survive were 50/50 and he was worried about my credit rating. Unbelievable.

Is it any wonder that I would forever be conflicted when it came to spending money and applying for credit?

Now enter the cottage. And the sleepless nights and the endless questions. Are you prepared for more work? More debt? More doubt? Stop worrying, say friends, neighbours and realtors. Just embrace the lifestyle! Correct me if I'm wrong, I think to myself, but I'm buying real estate - I'm not coming out.

But maybe for a first-generation immigrant, buying a cottage is a sort of coming out. For us, a dance is taking place, a careful two-step with our parents' vivid memories of the old world and our tentative embrace of the new. With a dance floor like this underneath, it is tricky not to step on a few toes.

Then, one night, six months after the question was posed, my father's favourite line came back to haunt me - but with a lighter twist. You don't ever know what life is going to give you, but what it has given me so far - with a few major exceptions - has been surprisingly good. Just like that, the choice became simple.

It's a line I think of often in my first few weeks at the cottage we ended up buying. Though I could have spent forever making the decision to buy it, I let what my father taught me about people - and not about money - guide me.

A place - cottage, home or country - is really only as good as what it holds. And my father is everywhere here. I still hear his voice when I'm paying the hydro bill and buying the groceries (with cash, of course). But I also hear it in places I hadn't expected him to be. In the evergreens and oaks knitted together to make the landscape. In the lakes and the islands with neighbours on them that I will come to know. In the mound of wood waiting to be piled, the bunkie begging to be painted and the mound of rocks near the fire pit. And now, somewhere between this place and his, is where I am.

A. Laura Francis lives in Prince Albert, Ont.

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