Chapter 16

Life was wonderful having Jennifer with me. Periodically, I would ask her if she’d decided when we would marry and always got the ‘Not yet’ answer. No sense pressing her, just wait – after all, with the exception of a piece of paper, we were already husband and wife.

The summer of the year Jennifer turned eighteen, she convinced me that we needed to build a new home on the site we’d looked at a while back. As a result of our discussions I could see that this was going to be a much larger project than the reconstruction of the cabin or the building of the addition. While we started the process of salvaging logs, I started putting out feelers for some sort of tractor to buy. The distance from the water to the new building site was much greater than at the cabin and I didn’t relish trying to get the logs up the slope the way we had in the past. In addition, the soil at the new site was much more conducive to putting in a normal drainage field for a septic system. That would allow us to have more amenities in the new home.

One day, I got a message to contact a fellow who had a tractor with a bucket on one end and a backhoe on the other – just perfect for my needs. Arrangements were made for me to go over to the main island and look it over. Jennifer of course came with me and went to visit Elizabeth and Helen at the store.

I looked the unit over and after talking to a couple of folks whose opinion I valued, I struck a deal to buy the tractor. The next issue for me to deal with was how to get it to our island. The seller had the solution for me – his brother had a larger boat with a bow that could be dropped down to allow the tractor to be driven on and off. Better yet the brother would do it for nothing as a favour to him.

I headed back to the store to pick up Jennifer and found a surprise – Jennifer had acquired a kitten. Seems that Elizabeth and Helen’s female cat managed to get out on them and found a tom cat. The result was a litter of three kittens who were now weaned and looking for a home. How could I not say yes when Jennifer said she wanted to take the kitten that she was holding home.

I wondered what would happen when Maggie saw Ralph (that was the name that Jennifer had already given the kitten). At first, Maggie wasn’t sure about this new addition to the family. It wasn’t long though, before Maggie’s natural maternal instinct kicked in. Soon, where you saw Ralph, you saw Maggie. It was cute to see the two of them sleeping together, Ralph curled up in a ball cuddled up to Maggie’s belly.

A couple of weeks after our trip to the main island, the tractor arrived and over the next week or so, both Jennifer and I got used to operating the unit. My initial concerns about how well Jennifer would do operating the tractor were soon put to rest and in no time at all, she was as proficient as I was, if not more so.

The arrival of the tractor allowed us to start hauling the logs up from the beach. One day when we had no logs left to bring up, Jennifer suggested we take some stakes and string and lay out the new home. I went out and gathered some stakes, some twine and a 50 foot tape measure. After some discussions and measuring of logs we finally decided on the outside dimensions of the house.

“Okay, now let’s figure out how we’re going to divide this space up,” Jennifer said. “Can we make this a 2 story building?”

“Why do we need a second story?” I asked.

“Why for the children, of course,” came Jennifer’s reply.

‘Children? Good heavens, we aren’t even married yet’ I thought to myself but wisely didn’t say anything out loud. “Well, I suppose we could,” I replied. “Maybe we could put 2 bedrooms on the upper floor – one at each end.”

Jennifer had a puzzled look on her face so I took a stick and drew out what I was talking about. Once I’d explained things on my drawing Jennifer understood what I meant.

Going back to our string outline, I marked out a space for stairs. “If the upstairs rooms are at either end of the building the stairs have to come down here,” I told her and showed her where I was talking about. Once that detail was in place we talked about where other things would go and finally our plan was in place.

I was looking off towards the ocean, envisioning what it would be like to sit on the porch looking out. I sensed some movement behind me and turned to see a naked Jennifer laying a blanket out in the area where our bedroom would be.