The blues. They’ve been pressing heavily on me these past two weeks, and although the death and funeral of Michael Jackson was indeed sad, that hasn’t been the source of my bruised and oozing mood.
I traveled with my wife and son to Tennessee’s Smoky Mountains, then continued on to Charleston, S.C. If you’ve never been to Charleston, you’ve missed America’s grandest city.
The Tennessee leg of the trip was to celebrate my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary and was attended by both my sisters and their families. There were fifteen of us in a giant three-story rented house in the hills above Gatlinburg.
Family gatherings have common traits. Grocery shopping for a clan of fifteen is difficult, especially when seven of them are children. The amount of Pop Tarts (blueberry with frosting, mainly) they went through was wondrous. There wasn’t a day where we made fewer than two trips to the grocery store.
We were guilty of ambitious starting times for tourist attractions and daily outings. The Tuckaleechee Caverns were a sight we’d all decided looked pretty interesting, so a departing time of 11 a.m. was agreed upon so we could get back with plenty of time to put a turkey in the oven. Noon passed and we were still loading the vans with baby gear and kids. We ordered barbecue at a local joint called Bennett’s that night for dinner.
My family is pretty generous, and paying tabs at restaurants became somewhat of a strategic game. Leaving the table for the bathroom with a secret stop at the servers’ stand worked at the beginning, but by the end, if you were going to have any success at picking up the tab, you had to phone in the request an hour before arriving.
I found that my sense of time shut down. I can wake up in the middle of the night at home and know exactly what time it is. We live in California, and Tennessee is three hours ahead, but even taking that into account, I was unable to guess within an hour of the actual time.
Of course we all ate and drank too much. My brother-in-law was diagnosed with diabetes since returning from the trip, and I suspect that the gallon bottle of pre-made margarita he and I charged through nightly couldn’t have helped.
My blues have faded somewhat since our return, and I sort of miss that lonesome yearning. Have you ever attended a family gathering where everyone lived under the same roof, and if so, what were some of the things you experienced?
