Our family looks forward to Labor Day weekend all year long. That's not even exaggerating. Each year as we drive home from the lake, there are sounds of sadness echoing throughout indicating it's going to be another 12 months before Labor Day returns. Honest. And then, every spring, the kids start to bounce around, eager for warm weather, and it's generally not long before we hear "I can't wait to go to the lake!". They love it that much. And we do too.
So when my dad passed away this spring, one of the first questions we had to field was "will we still get to go to the lake?". Pulled on our heartstrings like you wouldn't believe. My mom (and brother) assured the kids that "yes, indeed", we would be going back to the lake.
I'm not going to lie. It was hard on the 3 of us (my mom, brother and myself). I would imagine they did the same as I, and had a few moments of deep sadness with an ugly cry, thinking about being at the lake without dad. To give a brief history, my parents brought us to a variety of resorts across northern MN while we were growing up. Often along with the same crew that we now spend Labor Day weekend. Hence, doing something that we knew he would so dearly love, was difficult to do without Papa beside us. But, we all pulled up our bootstraps, and if for no other reason than the kids, we put on a smile and packed up for the cabin.
We ventured back to Lake Osakis to create new memories and reminisce at our old ones. We had a dreary night upon arrival, and my uncle Gary later admitted he wondered what his brother (my dad) was thinking as we all headed to the cabin just in time for a downpour.....imagine he would have said something along the lines of "good luck guys!" So we hung around inside for most of the night and the kids enjoyed the indoor pool.
Thankfully, the remainder of our weekend had spectacular weather. I can't remember a Labor Day weekend with a string of gorgeous-sunny-beautiful days like we experienced this year. Because my parents did such an amazing job of showing us how much fun lake life is while we were children, my goal is to do the same for our kids. It seems that being at the lake should be something along the lines of: fish, swim, tube, boat ride, repeat. Toss in a nightly campfire, complete with s'mores, and you've got yourself the epitome of a perfect Labor Day weekend. So we did just that.
My brother opted to rent a pontoon for the weekend and boy did we enjoy being out on the lake together. It was a first for me (I've never been on a pontoon!), and a first for the kids as he let them drive!! It didn't come without a little fiasco of it's own when we couldn't get it started Saturday. Once again, we looked up to the sky and wondered what dad would be thinking/telling us. Later in the day, when Ryan/Shane tried to take out the kids in Gary's boat for an afternoon of tubing, they experienced their own boat debacle. This was worse because they were not tied up to the dock and instead were quickly being pulled out with the wind. Ryan later admitted that someday we'll look back at this year and say "remember the shit show with the boats that first year we didn't have Leo with us?". We sure missed him in so many ways-not only emotionally, but also his expertise, his sense of humor (he was known to dance like crazy inside a cabin), and his overall presence.
We tried our best to have a good time, and I know the kids were beyond thrilled to be at the lake over Labor Day. I, for one, am happy to have that "first" behind us. I'm glad we went, we did truly have fun, and I know we will all look forward to our next trip to the lake.
...until next year.
1 comment:
GJ: Mixture of :) & :(. But, thank you to all for the time together.
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