When was the last time you spent real time with your extended family?
It seems weddings and funerals are the backbone of most connections when gathering requires days long car rides or leaving on a jet plane. My family is one such family.
Most of my life has been lived in the Midwest, sandwiched between family out east in Vermont and New Hampshire, down south in Florida and Georgia or across the big pond in Switzerland.
No spontaneous gatherings are featured in this arrangement. Rather, methodical planning requiring coordination of schedules, the purchase of water shoes, and the endurance of arduous planning.
When I was a kid, circa 1973, several years after my parents’ divorce, my father moved to Venice, CA, which set in motion our move from Suburban Chicago to Florida. My mother packed up our lives, and the three of us moved to Largo to be closer to her mother and sister.
My brother and I hit the jackpot!
My aunt and uncle lived in Clearwater, FL, with their 5 children. Similar in age and spirit, we became stuck like glue. Games of red rover, hide and seek, or hoops in the driveway where the instant quorum of participants was at the ready.
We spent most weekends together. My uncle taught us how to water ski, and we joined our cousins in sailing school.
We raced Prams in the Intracoastal Waterway, water skied behind a tiny Boston Whaler that was continually swamped by enormous yachts, fished for crab with raw chicken tied to a string, made sand castles on the white sand beaches, swam in the Gulf, and threw rocks at alligators in a nearby pond.
We deep sea fished, and I met my first cockroach!
We ran a-muck as one giant apple.
Sunday nights were family dinner night. We kids had the first seating at a long dining table draped with newspaper and spewed with fresh crab, shrimp, and potatoes that we ate with our hands.
My city-apartment life was in the dust, and we embraced a life we could have only previously dreamed.
Indelible still to this day.
Rather astonishingly, this time represented only one jam-packed year of my youth. We returned to Suburban Chicago after the school year, and my cousins moved to Savannah, GA.
In the time passed since those formidable days, besides random one-offs, we have gathered for weddings, and now, sadly, funerals.
My B-side mantra: Death brings people together!
The recent passing of my mother’s sister, matriarch to the crab fishing, alligator slayers, did just that. In a breath of fresh air, I defiantly proclaimed the eminent need for a family gathering.
And just like that, FamReU 2025 in Northern Michigan was born.
Among our graying hairs gathered the next generation of cousins, and we did not let one minute of time slip by unattended.
In honor of their father and his legacy, we water skied.
Fortunately, with no alligators to harass nor sharks to fear in the fresh water lake, we spent our time together on and in the water. In addition to water skiing, we wake boarded, paddle boarded, swam wearing bathing suits and without, and stared at the endless stars and enduring Milky Way.
We danced on the deck and played sporting, competitive rounds of corn hole, ping pong, giant Jenga, and paddle ball.
Twenty-Two of us for 4 days ranging in age from 16 to 89. My mother, the oldest, and my second cousin, the youngest. Ten traveled from Savannah, 2 from Montana, 2 from New Hampshire, 3 from Colorado, and 5 are here in Michigan.
We ate from paper plates and drank cold beer out of coolers packed with ice.
We laughed until we cried and cried until we laughed.
We relived old memories and created new ones.
We missed those unable to attend and spoke of them often.
We revived an undeniable, enduring relationship cultivated through our shared upbringing, mutual interests, and the inescapable genetic link that molded and joined our spirits before we understood what that would mean.
Family.
We gathered where apples abound.
