Welcome to Walton's Mountain

The kids and I arrive and unpack. It is peaceful and uneventful except for one thing.

I forgot my suitcase.

I call J. We’d laughed earlier because last year I was 35 minutes into the 75 minute drive when I realized I’d left the suitcase at the foot of the stairs. The kids had harassed me all day about it today and stood like sentries to make sure I’d placed it in the car this year. The only difference was, they are bigger this year and have bigger things. I’d had to pack a separate suitcase for me. And had left that one – where else? – at the foot of the stairs. (Things like this happen to me. When I was a child, I left one shoe in a hotel or rental home on every family vacation.)

Thankfully, we are staying at my sister’s and she has a spare pair of PJs I can wear. J. offers to move his Tuesday visit to the following morning so I do not have to make an irrational panic-fueled trip to the local outlets for things I have an abundance of at home. I love to shop, but pressured bathing suit shopping with my pre-teens in tow hardly sounds like fun.

He’ll be here by 8 am – in time to help me meditate myself to peaceful acceptance of the End of the World.

The next morning, J. calls me from my house. The suitcase is in the car, he’d retrieved my camera, and he’d offered to pick up a couple of things the kids might want but had left behind. And within 90 minutes, we are toasting bagels and brewing coffee and frying freshly sliced bacon and swinging in hammocks and hammock swings enjoying the beauty of lakeside mountain living.

We spend the day at the lake – swimming in the cool fresh water, going off of the trapeze swing, swimming out to the mid-lake decks to hang with the other pre-teens testing the limits of their independence.

And suddenly, hours earlier than anticipated, I see Estelle and Bill squinting from the snack bar deck and waving wildly at us. The kids rush to greet them. We are about ready to pack it in anyway and need to let them into the house. I leave the serenity of the beach to guide Estelle and Bill to the cottage like the victims leading their predators right to their doors.

Bill hound dogs his way through the house and discovers within minutes the precise locations of the beer on tap, the stash of wine and the liquor supply. As I helped my mother carry in their luggage (and boxes of things like Bill’s French Roast, his Vidalia onion, a bottle of special order creamy Caesar dressing, a half a pack of his preferred brand of hot dogs, etc.) I can hear icecubes clinking into glasses.

Happy hour has arrived. And there is nothing happy about it.