{Catching Up}
I’ve never been a fan of the blog author’s apology for having gone missing for an extended period of time and the subsequent promise to return to writing in some more committed style than they wrote prior. So you won’t get such an apology — nor commitment — from me now. Instead, I can only provide context to the absence and try to catch you all up best I can to what we’ve been up too since the tail end of June.
My dad, Teresa, my sister Morgan and my family accounted for seven of the fifteen family members on the Hargrave 2010 Family Gathering
The last two weeks were dominated by our annual (or at least recurring) family vacation with my dad’s side of the family. My step-mother — a word that I hate to use as it feels like it diminishes the importance of a truly special person and extended family in my life, but don’t have a more universal word to use — Teresa was one of three sisters born to Barbara Bailey, known to us all as Muv. The Hargrave girls and their families are an amazing group of people to be around and my family has always felt so included in theirs.* When the entire group is together the tally tops fifteen of us and when all fifteen head off together on vacation, there is much fun and more love to be had. This year’s vacation took the lot of southerners and a few from the midwest to our home state of New Hampshire for a vintage NH Lakes vacation at Twin Lake Village over the July 4th week.
*Coming from a “broken home” (i.e. divorced parents) was never more of a misnomer than for me. Sure having your traditional family together is a wonderful thing, but in my case, the product of divorce has actually extended my immediate family to include people I couldn’t imagine not being family to.
{Unplugging}
While I was still working full time, I found it next to impossible to fully disconnect and “unplug” from the office during vacation. I hated the thought that people who needed me in some form or another wouldn’t be able to reach me and problems gone unsolved would run amok until I was able to lend my two cents to their solution. I wasn’t so egotistical that I thought that the world would stop if I unplugged from it, but I knew that I was happier staying on top of things — even if from afar — instead of waiting until vacation ended and plugging back in to the network.
In my new role, “work” takes on a whole new context. My work are my kids. In this case, in going on family vacation I truly was “taking my work on vacation with me” — of course I wouldn’t have it any other way.
My new “work” doesn’t require the notion of being “plugged in”. There weren’t problems to be solved happening somewhere else across the country for me to weigh in on with my expertise. There were only problems to be solved happening in the twin bed on the other side of our bedroom in the family cabin that we shared with Ryan or on the way down to the lake in the afternoon.
As it turns out, even if I were still working traditionally, I would have been forced to unplug at Twin Lake Village. This lakeside vacation community was straight out of Dirty Dancing and Kellerman’s resort. In other words, it was as if the Internet had yet to be invented. Sure there were the elusive few bars of AT&T’s Edge network available to my connection starved iPhone to be be had, but that was like trying to imagine streaming HD video over a 1995 AOL dial-up connection.*
*Yet another reason for my lack of updates over the past two weeks.
I have to admit having not appreciated “unplugging” as much as I should have in my previous life, but I guess some lessons need to be experienced and internalized before they can be realized.
{Twin Lake Village (TLV)}
Twin Lake Village, New London, NH - 7/8/2010
The Hargrave family vacations that I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of have usually brought the group to the Coastal Carolina region for a great oceanside family gathering. Given our needs with young children and our distaste for travel with infants* the family was generous enough to consider a vacation closer to our home in New Hampshire. After some recommendations from friends, a lakeside resort in the lakes region of New Hampshire seemed like a win for everyone — well, maybe not the 20-somethings who, rightfully so, had visions of Kellerman’s Resort and Patrick Swayzee running through their heads.
*Traveling with an infant requires far too much gear and a long travel day can throw them off schedule to the degree that they don’t get back into a groove until its nearly time to pack up and head back home. In what world does that sound like a relaxing experience for parents? I’ll save the destination travel until Julia’s just a bit older. With Ryan, the ability to walk and talk consistently seemed to usher in a time when longer travel was less cumbersome on the parents.
Twin Lake Village, near Lake Sunapee and just outside New London, NH — home of Colby-Sawyer College — was nominated as the host for the 2010 gathering. The 112 year old lakeside resort featured large cottages, included food service, a private beach on Little Lake Sunapee with kayaks, canoes, and sunfish for rental, tennis, a nine-hole executive golf course with charm, character and greens fees included. What we did not know, and would come to find out, was the tremendous culture of TLV. We met multiple families who had been coming to TLV every summer, staying in the same cottage or house year over year, for fifty plus years spanning multiple generations. It was as if we were joining a true community of summer vacationers who, under extreme circumstances to be detailed momentarily, opened their small piece of summer sanctity to our travelling horde.
With all fifteen people’s travel arranged from Atlanta, Boulder, DC and other departure points across the Eastern seaboard travelling via plane, automobile and even cross-country via RV, our two cars packed to the gills with food for the week and enough gear for a small army of vacationers we woke up the Saturday morning ready to hit the road — our final destination a ten bedroom TLV cottage named “Cutting”. Thats when our vacation plans took an unexpected turn. Cutting Cottage had been in a fire the night before our arrival and damaged beyond repair. The cabin neighboring Cutting, Pines Cottage, was raised to the foundation by the flames in the middle of the night — only ten hours prior to our family’s arrival.
The remains of Cutting Cottage after the 2010 Twin Lake Village fire - 7/5/2010
Thankfully none of the family members spending their last night at TLV the night of the fire were injured as they awoke in time to evacuate the building safely. They did however lose all their belongings, including cars and all forms of ID, to the blaze. I couldn’t help but wonder if our family would have been so lucky should the fire have started a night later. With ages spanning six months to eighty plus, the thought still sits uncomfortably with me as I sit down to write this having skirted any disaster.
To the resort’s credit, accommodations were quickly made to free up a four bedroom cottage*, Tiz-N-Taint, a few rooms at the main Inn and an exception to allow my aunt and uncle’s enormous RV — in which they are travelling North America with their 12 year old son Gavin for one full year — to plug into the cottage and house their family.
*A family that had been going to the resort for fifty plus years had reserved Tiz-N-Taint as overflow for the cottage they traditionally stay in as their family was growing with time. They happily squeezed back into their original cottage to make room for our family to keep our gathering in tact. I think that generosity and sense of selflessness in support of Twin Lake Village sums up the spirit of the resort and its guests nicely.
The full Twin Lake Village experience is nearly impossible to translate to “paper” with the proper context. The closest experience I can bring to bear would be the “sleepover” summer camps across New England that I would go to for a week when I was growing up — except this one was built not for ten to fifteen year olds, but family’s spanning generations.
The typical day would include strolling to the dining haul for breakfast around 8:00 am, enjoying some morning family time or playing tennis or golf and then taking our boxed lunches provided by TLV to the lake for the afternoon where we would spend the remains of the day playing in the water like I did when I was ten years old. From there, we would scamper to the showers and prepare for a “formal” dinner in the dining hall before it was games or movies projected onto a bed sheet hanging over the fireplace with the family until exhaustion won the evening and we retired to do it all again the following day.
What started out feeling potentially campy and potentially boring turned out exceeding every expectation I could have held onto. Whether we become one of the returning families year over year is still in question — and due to logistics and diversity of needs from the members of the family not likely an annual destination — but I could easily see why TLV holds such a special place in the hearts of so many families that call it their summer retreat for one week each year.
Not a bad was to beat the summer heat, Little Lake Sunapee - 7/6/2010
Two things really stand out for me from this trip. The first was creating the experience of extended family that I so richly remember growing up with for Ryan and Julia. It was so special to see the kids interact with their family in meaningful ways that will leave an indelible memory for them to reflect back on about their childhoods. Whether watching the joy of Muv holding her youngest great-granddaughter Julia for the first time or Ryan learning yoga from my cousin Laurel or playing golf with my Dad and my uncle Rex — a golf pairing that would rival any other that could come to mind in the “if you could play with any foursome who would it be” game — the experience of family was rich and fulfilling.
The second lasting experience for me was watching Ryan become truly comfortable with the water and see it turn from trepidation to unadulterated joy. I can remember spending hours on end in the water as a child without ever tiring or getting bored in the slightest — which was a challenge for my ADHD riddled brain. I loved watching Ryan turn that corner this week and find a true love for swimming and frolicking in the lake.
{Gavin}
Gavin may have been the highlight of Ryan's entire vacation. I hope he had 1/2 the fun with her that she had with him.
Of course, if you ask Ryan to name her most special and favorite part of the vacation it would invariably come back as “playing with Gavin”. Gavin is my twelve year old cousin. Not often will you find a twelve year old boy who is so content and comfortable sharing a common experience and bond with a four year old girl. If there were moments that Gavin was tired of entertaining or being entertained by Ryan, he never let them show. Whenever Jen or I wondered where Ryan had run off to, all we had to ask was “where’s Gavin?”.
Being the first child of my generation with a considerable amount of people in the generations preceding, I can understand how not having other children around close to your age could be difficult. I was fortunate that my aunts and uncles always found fun and interesting ways to play with me when we were on our family vacations in Fort Myers, Florida. Watching Gavin fill that role with Ryan and giving her such special attention while making the vacation and whirlwind of pure fun and playing meant so much to me.
Thank you Gavin — you have a big fan around these parts 
{Stats and Facts}
- Holes of golf played on vacation: 45
- Ryan’s fever the first day of vacation: 100
- Number of bars of cell phone service on the porch of Tiz-N-Taint: 1
- Average number of Capri Sun’s Ryan drank per day before complaining of a tummy ache: 3
- Desserts consumed by me on an average evening before complaining of a tummy ache: 3
- Hours Ryan spent in the water: 28
- Hours Julia spent in the water: 1
- Square footage of Julia’s bedroom (aka: the linen closet): 10
- Combined travel time to and from vacation: 2 hours 15 minutes
{Photo of the Week}
Our first real family portrait with the four of us taken at Little Lake Sunapee, 7/8/2010
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