Family

Family members and friends who have become part of the family over the years came together from Oakland, Michigan, Cape Cod, and New York to reminisce and enjoy being together. When I first entered this family, some 30 years ago, such get togethers were very much defined by the consumption of large quantities of strong spirits and much cigarette smoke. Everyone showed up with their wicker baskets full of large bottles filled with clear or brown liquids. The people in charge of the reunion then were Axel’s parents, aunts and uncles; the women mostly homemakers and men who had fought in WWII. The annual reunion was something they looked forward to, as much as I dreaded them. They have all passed on since then.

Now we are in charge and we bring mostly small brown bottles. Hardly anyone smokes and no one gets plastered anymore. We are from a different time and a different world.  This includes Woodstock which is celebrating its 40^th birthday. Cousins Phil, Kristen and Bobby were there and there were pictures to prove it which all of us thought pretty cool; they even still have their 6 dollar ticket stubs.

Axel had been interviewed at the Joan Baez concerned (on his birthday) and the broadcasting of the special Woodstock interviews was scheduled for yesterday on the Today Show. We suffered through one and a half hour of repeat footage of nonsense, advertisements and C-news and gave up looking for Axel being interviewed one half before the end of the show. We could not stand it any longer.

Nephew Michiel has decided his name is too difficult for Americans to pronounce. I stood next to him when he introduced himself to one of Axel’s relatives as ‘David.’ We picked up on this transformation quickly and now even his brother and dad call him David, and, although not yet right away, he eventually does respond when you call him by his new name.

The transformation of a year in America, after less than a week, is already visible (and audible). He’s speaking English as if he has lived here all his life (and, his little brother is not doing badly either).  I am afraid the nice British English he learned in school is already overshadowed by his new American accent. He also secured himself a crash pad in New York City by hanging out a good part of the day with Britta, the daughter of Axel’s cousin, who is also a freshman and off to NYU in a couple of weeks. We noticed the exchange of email addresses towards the end of the day. He worked hard at that and he deserved the positive response.

It was hot and humid at the place halfway up the mountain where we came together. Towards the end of the day we drove down to the village and immersed ourselves in the river; this included Chicha who learned to master fetching a stick that went downstream quickly and swam heroically against the current, encouraged by all of us. Little dachshund Stewie was not able to do this and kept busy retrieving stones from the riverbed, whether thrown at him or not.

Refreshed, we returned to the mountain, ate leftovers, played the ukulele, told stories, looked at some very old photos and checked out the family tree. When it got dark we sat around the campfire roasting hotdog and s’mores. In spite of the multiple insect bites it was a glorious day and another wonderful reunion, to be continued over brunch this morning.

Doll house

We slept in a little doll bed in a little doll room  in a little doll house that is placed in a row along a semicircle with other doll houses like it. At the back of the small cabins is a  gurgling brook; the tiny front porches look out over a grass strip that separates us from Route 3, aka Daniel Webster Highway. We are in New Hamsphire, at the entrance of the White Mountains National park. It is the weekend of the Magnuson Family reunion, organized by the Paul Magnuson branch out of their family cabin, the Moog, in Franconia.

Sita picked the place some months ago. It only had pictures of the cabins in the winter and looked quite quaint. Of course there was no picture of the road. Its other selling point was that it allowed Tessa to take Chicha. We occupy two cabins between the nine of us, one each side of the cabin with the perfectly groomed Scotties, two low by the ground and one quite tall on its legs, no doubt another breed but its haircut is the same as the others. They are very stately dogs compared to our playful grandpuppy.

We left in four batches from Manchester but first Steve arrived back from Canada after a 9 hour nonstop drive, only minutes after Tessa had left for work on the five-something train to Boston. We left Steve sleep and so we did not see him. Axel took care of the estate, again, and some medical issues, I telecommuted, Reinout worked on what looked like an academic paper (he is after all a professor) and the  boys discovered Singing Beach.

At 1:30 I set out in the first car with Reinout and Maurits. We were bent on beating the Friday summer exodus from Boston to the north. We succeeded fairly well after comparing experiences with the cars that followed at 3:30 from Lobster Cove (Axel and Michiel), at 4:30 from Boston (Tessa, Steve and Chicha) and at 5:30 (Sita and Jim),from Lobster Cove.

As the advance troops we checked in, reconnoitered the place, assigned sleeping places, bought and cooked dinner and welcomed all the subsequent arrivals with cold beer, gin tonics or wine; we had already finished the chips, something I had forgotten about teenage boys (it’s contagious). Maurits had bought the Dutch Chocolate icecream to remind him of his homeland.

It’s 6 in the morning now. Except for Reinout everyone is still sound asleep. He is checking out the wifi that is supposedly here by walking around with his computer. I am sitting at a picnic table looking at the fast flowing brook and recovering from a difficult night that produced a sore arm and shoulder. I did not have the right pillow arrangement around my shoulder and I am paying for that now.

We do find the best spot for the wifi which is also the place where the mosquitoes congregate so that each hit of the keyboard has to be alternated with a hit of a mosquitoe on one body part or another. We are waiting for the sun to chase them all away.