Rolling Home

From the heaven of friends who feel like family to the heaven of family who feel like friends. From a ten-year home in the Carmel Valley to a 47-year summer home on the shores of Lake Michigan. From the pleasure of joyful work to the joy of pleasurable leisure. From the energy of large group love and adoration (on all sides) to small group love and intimacy. 

 

That’s one way to talk about arriving at the lake house for two weeks with my wife, children and grandchildren, punctuated by one brother-in-law and his wife, a second brother-in-law and my niece. A reunion marked by a delayed flight 1:00 am arrival, thunderstorms that same night, a warm Lake Michigan amidst cold air and two days without sun. But tonight the sun made a brief appearance just in time to set and the forecast promises the weather we hope for on a beach and vacation. 

 

We are creatures of ritual and the ones we look forward to each summer for decades await us. We’ve already climbed the Sugar Bowl dune, biked to and coasted up Mystery Hill, played paddleball, gone to the library in town and played an evening game of Five Crowns. Fresh corn and barbecued chicken, sprawling in the sand under the sun, biking Rails to Trails to Crystal Lake, the Drive-in Movie and more await. The grandchildren loving it all as much as my own children did when small and still do as adults. Time is indeed a circle, or perhaps more accurately a spiral with the players moving up to the next level. This old man, for one, is eternally grateful, as he rolls from home to home with a knack-knack paddy-whack. The sun is out, the lake is calm, the kids are awake and a beautiful day awaits.