(HOST) Family vacations are a wonderful thing but, as teacher, historian and commentator Vic Henningsen observes, sometimes they take a little work to appreciate.
(HENNINGSEN) Every summer since 1926 my wife’s family has gathered on a trio of islands off the eastern shore of Lake Huron’s Georgian Bay. There’s no phone, no TV, nothing electrified other than a central kitchen – only relatives. Started by my wife’s great-grandmother and her four children, the camp now includes over fifty families – more than 250 people – all related and all eligible to visit if they can reserve space. In thirty years I still haven’t met them all.
To an in-law, even one of long standing, a trip to the islands is a daunting venture – a bit like being shipwrecked with a random sample of your wife’s relatives. You just hope the right ones made it into the lifeboat. After all, you’ll share a kitchen with these folks – all forty of them if it’s a full camp – and they’ll be quartered next to you in the small sleeping cabins that surround the main cottage.
So after a two-day drive and twenty-minute boat ride, you hold your breath as the dock appears and you see who’s there this week. Cousin Mike – good, we’ll fish.
The aunt who loves to bake- even better. Another aunt who swiped everyone’s bread nine years ago – rats! A long lost relative from New Mexico – last seen in the early ’70’s. Hmm.
Long experience with this crowd convinces me that there’s truth to the saying "When you see a relative, you find a thorn." What, after all, do the diplomat, the lobsterman, the business executive, and the fire-fighter have in common other than that they’re all trying to cook breakfast for their families simultaneously while bickering over who gets which camp outboard for fishing today?
But every year we manage to stay together. The low-tech nature of the place requires us to make our own entertainment; and fishing expeditions, picnics, ping-pong tournaments, and Monopoly all require lots of people. And it is family: a shared history with people and place help smooth over the bumps. Plus there’s always some crisis that demolishes barriers: boats break down; skunks get into the cottage; the kitchen loses power for a week and we must cook meals for thirty on a tiny gas grill. At such times you find yourself confessing vulnerabilities to cousins you barely know and, together, you figure out how to cope. Unlikely people rise to the occasion, revealing surprising talents for things like navigation, charades, or making a four course meal out of whatever’s lying around. I’ve often thought the island motto should be "Deal with it", for that’s what you have to do – and that’s what families do.
As a result, my wife’s family – large and scattered though it is – is one of the tightest I know. My children know all their cousins – including third cousins and second-cousins-once-removed – and know them well. And every year, though I arrive wondering why I’m putting myself through this again, I leave with regret.