On Golden Pond This is the love story of Ethel and Norman Thayer who are returning to their summer home on Golden Pond for the forty-eighth year. He is a cantankerous retired professor with heart palpitations, but still as tart- tongued and observant as ever. Ethel is ten years younger and the perfect foil for Norman. They are visited by their divorced middle-aged daughter and her dentist fiance', who then go off to Europe leaving their teenage son for the summer.