When Life Gives You Lemons…

After almost a year of planning, the day of our middle son, Nick’s, wedding to his college sweetheart approached when suddenly, six days before the wedding, she canceled it.  Nick was completely traumatized, feeling that his world had just fallen apart.  I had the task of calling our friends and family to let them know what was going on, as well as canceling tuxedos and the rehearsal dinner. We were able to cancel the dinner, but not the picnic shelter.  The rooms at the wedding venue were only refundable with at least a four-week notice of cancellation.  In March we lost our wedding photographer, so asked Chris’s mother if she would be willing to do it for us.  She is a wonderful nature photographer, with photos published in multiple magazines, including National Geographic (Check out her blog http://www.onthewingphotography.com.), so we were comfortable that she would do an incredible job and bought a plane ticket to get her here.  We also had family flying in from both California and Massachusetts.  When I called my sister-in-law to let her know what was going on, she said that they were going to come for a visit anyway.  We had not seen each other in 10 years, so why waste the airfare and hotel cost?  I ran the idea by Nick of having an impromptu family reunion and he liked the idea.  Almost everyone from our family liked the idea as well and so we went with it.

My sisters-in-law, Cheryl and Debbie, flew in Friday morning, so we met them for lunch before driving to Clarksville, VA.  We ended up having a much later start to the trip than originally intended and travel was slow due to a major thunderstorm.  At one point a bolt of lightning flashed in front of us and appeared to stay hanging in the sky for a very long time.  It was scary and magnificent at the same time.

When we arrived in Clarksville, I dropped Chris off at Occoneechee State Park to cook the prime rib-eye loin and went to Cooper’s Landing Inn to get checked in and heat up the mac & cheese, which seemed to take forever.  When I was finally able to make it back to the park, I enjoyed a margarita and a brief visit with my sister, sister-in-law, and nephews.  I didn’t have much time to visit though as it got dark very quickly and we had to pack up.  Our son Joe and his crew had only planned to come for the picnic on Friday, but then decided they would like to go to the lake with us the next day.  He asked if we had room in our cottage for them to sleep on the floor.  Feeling that would be very uncomfortable, I called Cooper’s Landing to see if we could pick up one of the other cottages.  They were very accommodating and even turned on the ac so the cottage would be cooled off by the time we got back.

Nick was camping at the park (Cooper’s Landing banned him from the property) so we said goodnight and left the park.  The cottages at Cooper’s Landing are beautiful as are the rooms in the main building.  There were some minor issues, broken faucet handles, an inoperable jacuzzi, and stale snacks, but otherwise, it was a lovely b&b.  We went over to the kid’s (I affectionately refer to them that way even though they are all adults) cottage to hang out before we called it a night.  In the morning, they delivered a tasty breakfast to our cottage.  After breakfast, we headed to a recreation area on the lake where we met up with Nick.  We secured a spot right next to the lake with a grill and had a nice lunch.  Our friend John brought a canoe for some on the water fun.  It was a beautiful afternoon.  It was nice to visit with family that we haven’t seen in a very long time, as well as having all three boys together.  We also enjoyed having our “new” family with us, Joe’s crew, Kevin’s girlfriend, Nick’s friend (the maid of honor), and John, as well as two puppies.

We were so worn out after the day in the sun we called it an early night.  Those of us staying at the b&b had breakfast on the patio in the morning.  The staff was amazing throughout our stay, but our server was above and beyond, even moving tables so that we could all sit together.  After breakfast, we stopped at the state park to say goodbye to Nick, who was staying for a while longer to spend the afternoon with his aunts, before heading home.

We took what could have been a very depressing, unhappy weekend and turned it into a fun family get together.  The highlight of the weekend for me was when Nick expressed how much he was enjoying the weekend.  I am sure that he still has a lot of healing to do, but at least we were able to come together as a family and bring him some happiness.  Life isn’t always peaches and cream.  Sometimes you have to take what you’ve been given and make the best of it.  Life gave us lemons, so we made lemonade.