Weekend Celebration

It should have been a larger family gathering, but it was a family gathering nonetheless. Lori's cousins, Mike and Eric left their respective homes on Friday with tents, beer keg, corn and hot sausage and headed for Walk Up Lake in Bitely. Dave, Lori's brother and his wife, Paula, own a cottage there. Mike and Eric set up their tents on the cottage yard, set up the beer keg and began the family gathering.

Lori's mom, Patricia, who passed away last year after a 20 year battle with cancer, was survived by her brother, Ronald James (Jim) and Judy. Jim and his wife Mary Sue have three children, Greg, Karin, and Dorthy (Dot). The three of them married, divorced and married again. They all have children and they are called the Virginia gang, although they do not all live in Virginia at this present time.

They are called the Virginia gang lovingly, jokingly and lazily. Yes, it is easier to lump then all under one fictitious title than it is to actually itemize them individually by residence, martial status and child custody and visitation allowances. Irregardless of how they are grouped, titled, or thought of, they are loved dearly by their extended family and are given the deepest heartfelt invitations to the annual family gathering at the Koster cottage in Bitely, and they all said that they would love to be there, but could not come that weekend.

The beer in the metal keg was very cold and despite the faulty seal on the tap, the spigot rendered the holder of a red plastic cup foamy comforting Bud Light. Now, light beer is not my first choice in beer, in fact, it comes in dead last or second to my first choice of regular beer. Budweiser is my second choice in the Anheuser-Busch family. Michelob being my first and Busch being my least favorite. I know that the beer drinkers present at the Smith Koster-Pond-Zindler (Judy divorced her husband Jerry and re-married Ted Zindler, the two of the haven't missed this gathering since it started three years ago) gathering are not nearly as picky, choosy, or snobbish about beer as I am, but I know what I like. I drank at least seven of those plastic red cups filled with ice cold Bud Light. Had it been Michelob, Molson or Labatt, well let's just say I would have a lot more; which is just as well because I drove home at 11:30 pm.

We left Saturday morning, yesterday, around 10:00 am. We arrived there shortly before noon. I had not eaten anything and was feeling it. It never ceases to amaze me how my appetite reflects my emotions concerning any given situation. Throughout the week, I arrive at work shortly before 7am and remain there at least until 3pm and some days as late as 5pm. I don't eat anything, I only drink coffee and water. As soon as I walk in the door of our three bedroom bath and half ranch, my stomach rumbles and I am craving food. Here it was noon and I was very hungry. I conclude that I don't like the work I am doing at all and my appetite or lack thereof is the physical manifestation or reflection of my deepest heartfelt feelings about my work or situation. In other words, I loved being at the family gathering at Walk Up Lake, but I detest being at work.

The food was abundant. Pulled Barbecue Pork, Potato salad, which I peeled and sliced the potatoes(Lori sliced the onions, boiled the potatoes, and hard boiled and peeled the eggs, onions and made the dressing with Mayonnaise, Mustard, and her secret ingredient), fruit salad, sliced fresh vegetables with dip, hot dogs, hot sausage, roasted corn, and baked beans. Oh, did I forget to mention the dessert? Well, perhaps to say the food was abundant was an understatement.

There was supposed to be four more people there, two adults and two children, all with very healthy appetites, not that they are overweight, quite contrary, they are all very physically active and eat to live. They are, Tom and Marcy, and their two boys, Spencer and Troy. Marcy is Judy's daughter, sister to Mike and Eric, and cousin to Lori. Tom is her husband, and they cancelled on Friday because Troy had a softball tournament. We we all sad and disappointed that they were not there.

At this point you might be thinking that we attempted to drown the sorrow of sadness and disappointment that we felt from the absence of Marcy Simpson family and the Virginia Gang by imbibing cups of Bud Light and attempted in vain eat the reminder away of why we were drinking in the first place, by consuming heaping helpings of the meat, salads, buns, beans and vegetables half covered in a sour cream based dip, but we didn't. We drank the cups of Bud Light and ate from the overly abundant(forgive the redundant phrasing) supply of food because we were there and so was the beer and food.

I spent most of the 11 hours and 43 minutes of the time there reading the Da Vinci Legacy, taking digital photos, eating roasted corn and other food items, and drinking Bud Light from those large red plastic cups. Those cups reminded me of my college days when I would go to a keg party. There were two colors of these cups, red and blue. I have never seen any green, yellow, purple or orange cups, just red and blue. In Star Wars theology, we have two choices the blue of Obi-Wan Kenobi or the red of Sith Lords. I guess yesterday we were the red of the Sith Lords, but none of us made objects fly, choked one another with our minds or made blue lightening to fly from our fingertips. Perhaps the Jedi theology of Star Wars doesn't apply to the family gathering at Walk Up Lake, but it sure would be an entertaining show if it did.

The entertainment came from golf cart rides on the wooded trails, canoe rides in the high winds, and from intoxicated karaoke. The karaoke began with 10 year old Sean Koster being proded into singing by his eight year old cousin, Nathan. Nathan had provided earlier entertainment by removing all his clothes and being told that if he did, he would be tossed into the lake. This threat/promise was made by his mother, Lori, who then delegated action of this threat/promise to me, his father. I continually told Nathan to keep his clothes on, but he removed them all nonetheless and I picked up the buck naked child and carried him to the end of the dock and tossed him into the water. He had changed his mind and wanted to get dressed, and ended up in the lake crying out of anger, frustration and embarrassment.

Bob, the prancing, prissy, Labradoddle, was also entertaining. He spilled Nathan's pop and ate one of his hot dogs. He jumped on everyone, tried eating corn husks from the trash and basically wore himself out. By the end of the day, he was sleeping on the ground near the campfire.

I added to the karaoke entertainment by lending my assistance to the "singing" of Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London." I took Adam on two golf cart rides, and Evan on a canoe ride that ended with me walking the canoe to shore, because the wind blew us across the lake and made it almost impossible to make it back to shore.

Lori ended the night's entertainment by falling down while walking up the cement steps to get to the van. The greatest entertainment by far was seeing the stars in the clear northern sky. It was breathtaking and spectacular. It was for that reason that I stayed later than I wanted to.

The drive home was a bit nerve racking for me, because it was at night on twisting turning dipping and hilly country roads. As we got closer to home I was speeding on US 31 heading south to home here in Holland. Suddenly bright lights appeared in my rear view mirror, I was in the right lane behind another van in the right lane since were north of Spring Lake and I kept it that way all the way to West Olive. In other words, we were both speeding, but the other driver was always going faster. As those bright lights got closer I slowed down closer to 55 and then I saw that it indeed was a Sheriff SUV. The flashing lights were turned on after it passed me on the left and the other van was pulled over. I guess I got lucky, or perhaps my little bit of caution paid off. I pulled into the driveway around 1:20am and was in bed by 1:30.am I slept until 11:30am.

I drank a Miller Chill and a tumbler of water while writing this and thought about seeing all those stars and felt thankful for all the astronomy that I remembered and a little regret that I didn't remember more. But as Eric said, "just look at those stars and think of the depth of it all." Truly. it was a night worth remembering.