The imperfect vacation

Every Christmas, Jon and I drag out our old DVD collection (assembled some time in the ten years between VHS and streaming) and re-watch all our favorite holiday movies. Favorites like Rudolph make the cut, of course, but one of our favorites is Christmas Vacation. This is the underground classic in which Chevy Chase dreams up the perfect old fashioned family Christmas for his extended family, and then has one thing go wrong after another. In the end, his house is a shambles and all his guests are headed for a hotel, but all is righted again in the end and everyone learns that it's in the imperfection of such an event that we learn the true value of our family and the moments we spend with them.

Not being in retail, I'm not trying to rush Christmas, but the lesson in Christmas Vacation became very real to me last week as we went in pursuit of our annual week of family camping perfection. We struggled first with planning dates this year, finally settling on a week in August, only to have to change our plans at the last minute to accommodate other plans. And as our new date approached, the weather report became uglier and uglier, to the point where we flirted with the idea of cancelling the trip all together. Instead we made a heartbreaking decision and moved our reservations to another Michigan State Park, where the rain was less imminent and the temperatures more promising. Upon arrival, though, they'd lost our reservation, and it didn't take long to learn that Mother Nature breaks her promises easily, and loves nothing more than a good surprise.

All was righted in the end, though. Having no reservation meant we got to pick our site in person, and we ended up with the best site in camp. And though our week was most definitely chilly, it was wet only on occasion, and the rain was never really driving. We enjoyed our games in the tent, were able to make all our meals as planned, even the ones over a campfire, sand can be manipulated even in warmer clothes, and cooler weather is great for hikes. Best of all, we spent the entire week without technology, excepting the up-to-the-minute weather apps on our phones, which I would argue simply helped us work the weather to our advantage.

Our vacation was most definitely not perfect. It was far, far from perfect. At lease Chevy Chase had snow when he wanted snow. But what we had instead of a warm, sunny week on the beach was a week of time together—really, really together. It doesn't get much more together than stuck in a tent hiding from the rain or the cold with nowhere else to go. If you can enjoy those moments, and we did, then you're golden. It's in those moments that we find ourselves and each other; in the games played, the books read, and the discussions had. In the moments between.

Imperfect as it was, our vacation was utterly perfect.

view from our tent

rain before dinner...and after

dinner in the break between rains on day one

evening hike after the rain on day one

a brilliant, if chilly, morning on day two

sand play on the warmest day we had

on the "haunted" beach (Tawas point appears to be losing ground to the lake)

day two dinner

day three, another clear, chilly morning

pancake lunch

a semi-wet evening in town

a serious book discussion on evening four

You don't have to go far

Relaxation for me has always come easiest north of a certain latitude. Cross the Zilwaukee Bridge and just feel the the sky get bluer, the grass get greener, the air become sweeter. Anything south of Gaylord has always seemed just a few steps too close the stresses and pulls of our suburban life.

But it turns out that you don't have make the long journey north to enjoy getting away from it all, and when our summer camping friends couldn't take as much time off this year, we found our little slice of heaven a few hours closer to home.

Go west, young family, and find the green trees and warm lakes of Waterloo Recreation center. Swimming and campfires and a little bit of wildlife were all we needed to make the weekend a great success, even with the scattered rain showers that passed through. We got ou s'mores, and our annual steak and corn campfire dinner. We got our time together, and no matter where we are, that makes the camping a great success.

Greenfield's Ragtime Street Fair, 2015

Two years ago, Jon made the birthday resolution of playing in Greenfield Village's Ragtime Piano Cutting Contest. He played, and he took home the trophy (which was actually a handmade pitcher, and he didn't get to take it home because they made it for him and then sent it to him). It was a great, fun time, even in the heat of what was the hottest summer we'd had in years.

Then last year we missed the competition because we were out of town, but this year...this year Calvin participated in the eternally entertaining cutting contest. This was an amazing thing for so many reasons. Lately Calvin has been complaining of a sort of stage fright. He has mentioned being nervous or embarrassed about many things. I reminded him that to participate in the cutting contest he'd have to play in front of hundreds of people, but he was undeterred.

So he practiced his little butt off to prepare, and as the date got closer I got increasingly nervous that he would suddenly become nervous, but the shoe never dropped. Performance time came and not only did he handle it like a pro, he nailed his piece. NAILED it. We couldn't have been prouder, and he couldn't have been more pleased. The judges encouraged him to come back, and suggested challenging himself with harder pieces because, as they told him, he clearly gets it. With a few more years on him he's got the competition in the bag.

But I mentioned many ways in which this was an amazing event. Calvin's calm and poise in front of hundreds of strangers (at the age of nine) was an amazing thing. And the crowd's response was another wow moment. I think all those people watched this young kid walk up to the piano and expected a cute performance, and they were all utterly surprised by his actual performance. People who were just passing through stopped to watch,  others paused in their texting, etc. to watch him, and at the end the crowd, much larger than it was at the beginning, erupted in applause. I don't know if Calvin really heard it or not—I know I would have been too nervous to have registered my surroundings—but the awe and appreciation of the surprised crowd was the final amazing thing of the day. Well, that and the number of strangers who stopped us after, even hours after, later in the park, to tell us what a fantastic job he did (to which I always say, or at least think, "don't tell us, we had little to do with it, tell him!" but that's a subject for another time).

Reunion on the 4th

My dad's birthday is on the 4th of July. He's quiet and unassuming, so he never makes a big deal out of the event, but I definitely grew up thinking that his birthday was a big deal. I mean, all the people, all the celebration, all the fireworks! Who else gets fireworks for their birthday? The illusion was perpetuated, at least in part, by the wild shindigs my grandparents threw every year, first in their stately old home with the suburban backyard and friendly neighbors, and later in their newly built larger home deep in the woods. In my memory these gatherings were always part birthday party and part 4th of July celebration, but the largest portion was a reunion of sorts, a meeting of long-time friends and family with catching up to do.

I don't actually remember how often they threw these parties. In my memory they were an annual thing until they sort of petered out, probably as kids (my generation) got older and other activities got in the way. When I was younger, there were great big tubs of beer and pop, high chairs littered the back patio, and we spent the evening lighting black carbon snakes in the driveway. I remember the smell vividly. The last party I really remember I was in middle school, or maybe high school. My dad was wearing a weird short-sleeved plaid shirt and a mustache, and his cake, made by a talented family friend, was shaped like a computer—the old desktop kind with a big monitor and clunky keyboard (only at the time it wasn't old).

So partying on the fourth has a long tradition in our family, just one that hasn't been exercised in an number of decades larger than one. As all extended families do, ours scattered to the call of school, work, and the next generation. Some of those revelers I haven't seen in nigh on twenty years. In that time the kids of my generation have gotten married and had children of their own. Others, like my grandparents, have passed away. In all those years, a lot has changed. If you go too long between reunions, you don't always recognize the people you are there to see.

So my dad's cousins held the reunion this year, down in Indiana farm country where my grandfather's baby sister is still living with many of her children, and their children, surrounding her. She is the last of her generation, her three brothers gone before her, but she is sharp and young at heart, and it was her birthday, actually later in the month, that brought us all together this year. We spent three days playing with cousins we see more regularly, and getting to know those we haven't seen in many years, in some cases ever. There was a big hill good for all kinds of play, trees for climbing, and a field that proved perfect for kickball. And while the kids roamed far and wide, the adults huddled together, sharing memories of the past and details of the present, our tight groups a stark contrast to the great openness of the heartland around us. Because that's  what a family reunion is about.

Partying

Have I have told the story here of our "camping friends"? I call them camping friends for the purpose of simplification, because we've gone camping with them at least every year for the past five, but that's not the only basis for our friendship. Sarah and I were friends growing up. We've been friends, in fact, since we were in first grade (Sarah likes to tell it that it would have been earlier, but she got stuck in afternoon kindergarten while I had morning). We lost touch somewhere midway through high school and did not reconnect until the miracle of facebook, when we found that our children were born just two days apart. Two days.

So we get together several times a year, including to go camping, and to celebrate the kids' birthdays together. It's a tradition now.

And, because one party per weekend isn't enough for a ninth birthday, we also had a party with the grandparents this weekend. You could say it was a grand party. Because you only turn nine once.