After our parents' deaths in 2005 and 2006, my siblings and I promised we would try to get together every year. This year the opportunity came in September, after my cousin-once-removed's wedding in Birmingham. The four of us would spend a few days together – no in-laws, children, or grandchildren – at my sister Laura's house on Lake Lanier, in north Georgia.
As soon as we arrived, late afternoon, we walked down to the lake and dove in. Sharon and I took a swim while Laura was putting the two paddle boards in the water. Then, while Lee did some quite passably good swan dives off the top of the boathouse, Laura, Sharon, and I did some sometimes passably good paddle-board yoga. The sister without a board would call out poses – "Down dog" "Arta chandrasana" – and the two on the boards would do the pose. Yoga is a skill of balance to begin with. To do poses on a slim piece of hard foam wobbling on a moving surface takes the utmost concentration. The first person to fall in gave the board to the sister waiting her turn.
As the sun was going down, we pulled the paddle boards off the water and sat on the dock drinking wine as the setting sun sent a flashing brilliance of golds and pinks across the lake. We toasted each other and our reunion. With a glance towards the heavens, we toasted our older sister, who died exactly a year before. We basked in the beauty of the sunset and of each other's company. We laughed a lot.
That evening Lee showed me pictures of his raft trip down the Colorado River. After dinner on the screened-in porch, he gave each of us an "early Christmas present" – a digitized copy of the home movies from the family trip to Alaska in 1959. We reminisced about that trip, talked about family, our favorite books. We moved inside and worked a jigsaw puzzle to completion.
The next day we took a hike on the Appalachian Trail at Neel's Gap, just strenuous enough, just long enough, beautiful in the Appalachian woods.
We had a late lunch at the Bourbon Street restaurant in Dahlonega, where I temporarily forgot where I was and ordered jambalaya because I thought I should have local fare. Back at the lake house, we had time for another swim and more fun with the paddle boards before dinner.
Then there was more good talk. Laura brought out another puzzle. We worked together on it for a while. Then Laura said good night and went to bed. Shortly thereafter, Lee did the same. Sharon and I worked steadily on. We didn't say much, only the occasional mumbled exclamation of success when a piece slipped into place, or a description of a piece we were looking for, in case the other person spotted it. The silence and the concentration made a cocoon of camaraderie around us. At 1:00 a.m. we put in the last piece we had. Two pieces were missing. We went to bed having done all we could
The next morning someone found one piece under the table. Sharon found the other one on the kitchen floor. It must have stuck to the sleeve of my sweater when I leaned over the puzzle, then dropped off when I walked to the kitchen. We put the final two pieces in place with a satisfying sense of completion.
We had breakfast, then tore the puzzles apart and put the pieces back in the boxes. We cleaned the kitchen and remade the beds with clean sheets. We loaded Sharon's paddle board on top of her car, closed up the house, and drove back to Atlanta.
There we concluded the siblings' reunion with expanded family. The in-laws rejoined us. Laura's daughter and two grandchildren came over, as did my son and granddaughter, who happened to be in Atlanta at the same time as I, though for different reasons. We played croquet in the back yard. (My ten-year-old granddaughter beat the socks off us!) The cousins, close in age, played as though the two years since they had seen each other had left no gap. We had dinner on the patio that night – children, grandchildren, in-laws, siblings.
The next morning Sharon drove back to north Georgia. Lee flew back to Charlottesville. The children and grandchildren had left for their own places of abode the night before. Laura's husband went to work, leaving her and me alone in the house. Before I left for the airport that evening to return to Oregon, Laura played the piano for me – Schubert, Beethoven, Gershwin.
Sharing the lake, the meals, the conversation – intimate times with each of my siblings – the easy flow from one to the other: I love my family.
Sounds rejuvenating. Good for you all to make the time and effort to make it happen. My brother's and I did reasonable well over the years including one for one night at our parents house on a lake in eastern Oklahoma. We spent most of the night drifting in the middle of the lake our conversation only interrupted by an occasional falling star. Many family memories are good!
ReplyDelete