Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Another Family Getaway

Have you noticed how it is very rare that you can recapture the moment, a time when you were content, with people who make you smile, in a place you feel at peace?

In the fall of 1996 we went on that wonderful family getaway up near Ironwood, with both my sisters, my mom, others, ten of us in all. So many things went awry, but it created such fond memories. In September of 1998, we tried to recreate that time. It wasn't a bad weekend, in fact nothing even went wrong. I think one of the kids got a scratch.

So what was different that weekend? We rented a double cabin at North Twin Lake in Phelps. Let’s see. It must have been my two kids, my mom, my sister Judy, her husband, their son, his girlfriend and four of Judy’s grandchildren. Maybe I was just out of sorts because my husband had stayed home to build a garage for us.

The weather was beautiful, the kids got to go swimming, we took a leisurely pontoon ride around the lake. But the magic just wasn't there. Was it because my sister Pat was becoming too weak from her cancer to join us? Was it because we had too many kids to balance out the adults? I don't know, and I suppose it is nothing to sweat. Hopefully, others in the family took away warm memories from the weekend.

I mostly took away melancholy. Would things ever be the same?

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