A FAMILY AFFAIR
Honouring a summer tradition more than five decades in the making
Celebrating a summer tradition for more than 50 years.
More than 50 years ago, my future uncle from Iowa, a bachelor at the time, came up to Canada to try his hand at fishing. He caught more than just fish! My aunt, who was training to be a teacher, had landed a summer job as a housekeeper at the resort where my uncle was staying. I am a little fuzzy on the details of exactly how they got together, since this happened before I was born, but I do know they got married the following summer, in 1964, and my aunt “went south.”
This cross-border union fostered a new family tradition of gathering together every summer near where my aunt and uncle first met, “the scene of the time” as my uncle termed the spot. The Iowa contingent quickly came to include two sons and a daughter. Every summer they would drive due-north a couple of states in an old car trailing an even older boat, crossing the Canadian border, exhausted and excited.
Now that I am a mother, I realize that must have been a long trip with three wriggling kids and a whole lot of groceries packed in the back. Back then, all I cared about was seeing my cousins and playing on the beach.
Our family tends to be a little loud and I would guess that we were probably not the camp
owners’ favourite guests but we can at least say we have been very steady customers. To date, our motley crew has been making an appearance every year for 53 years!
These annual appearances have included two generations of rather rowdy children, quite a number of boat breakdowns, and chronically snagged or tangled fishing lines. We also put on a pretty interesting water-skiing show for the other guests, whether they wanted to watch or not. One year featured my husband’s brother skiing straight into the dock, which involved some blood and gluing a foot wound back together. For a number of years, we tended to squabble over card game rules, what was for dinner and who should be setting the table.
A highlight of these weekends, for the family but certainly not for the ice cream store staff, is going for ice cream every night. For many families, going for ice cream is a simple affair, but with ours being a large and difficult-to-herd gang, it gets complicated. Somewhere along the line someone had the bright idea to order a half scoop of something and then a half scoop of something else which has become another family tradition that the ice cream people do not really appreciate about us.
A recent summer turned out to be my mom’s last time with us. She was in the final, gruelling stretch of a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. Mom had stopped eating for a number of days and we were wondering what we could possibly do. When we went for ice cream, she sat quietly and happily, ever so slowly eating a whole cup of ice cream. Ice cream then became our go-to trick whenever Mom went on an eating strike.
As these gatherings began before I was born, and we seem to have a hard time breaking with tradition, I have been going every August for my entire life. The only exception being the year my husband and I were on our honeymoon 27 years ago. We’ve done our part in keeping things going by adding two sons to the tribe, both of whom love our long weekends together. We hope they will bring their future families along on these long weekends even after we are gone.