Labor Day

For labor day I ventured six hours up the country up to a little town called Bracey, Virginia with my favorite fellas to stay at Hayden’s Family Lake house with them for the long weekend. The lake house has been the site of Hayden’s family get-togethers for more than twenty years. Hayden is the oldest of four boys and all but one brother was present with his sweet folks and a brother’s brand new wife, making a group of nine of us lazing around on the cozy sofas and basking the sun on the deck like a family of lizards. I really loved this place. It was Honbon-ish but in a camp for little boys kind of way. We played games all weekend. Not just board games and charades but sports and physical exertion kind of games. I fancy myself one of the guys most of the time. It is likely that none of the guys see me this way but I ignore this and pretend that I’m an especially cool girl that can keep up with guy-humor and shock men folk with unexpected comments from such a ladylike package. In reality I’m a whiny, unathletic, and lazy member of the friend group and I keep them all updated on girlish woes and the wedding industry. Who wouldn’t want that around? 

So when we got to the lake and they had two games of ping-pong simultaneously starting in different wings of the house before I had even set my bags down, I realized I would be no match for this kind of weekend. They swam and Wakeboarded. They threw Frisbees, whiffleballs, and footballs. There was Badminton, Cornhole, Spikeball, and Golf. We played ping-pong, video games, dominos, and a plethora of other mystery games. Also, we shot guns at cans.

We read books, swung in hammocks, napped in chairs, sunbathed, snacked, and told stories. I briefly partook in most of these activities and am proud to inform you that it turns out I’m good at Badminton and I hit my target every time I fired a gun. They called me Annie O and I beamed with pride. Everyone rotated cooking meals and collectively we ate 5 pounds of bacon in three days. The bacon and coffee morning combo made Erik and me feel sick.  

When the guys scampered off to do things that would result in personal injury, I stayed back at the house with Hayden’s Mom and asked her all about life raising four boys. She just looked at me a bugged her eyes out. We were great friends after that.

I reckon I met Hayden 5 or 6 years ago. He was hosting trivia at a pub downtown. He was matter of fact and polite so I assumed he must be a put-together professional type but that tickles me now. Hayden is very professional and polite but he’s also very similar to enthusiastic children on a playground during lunch hour. He’s a full throttle fella and it took time to learn to read him. I asked his Mom about him and she lazily rolled her head back and said, “I don’t know why he’s like that.” She said the boys get progressively more lackadaisical as you go down. Hayden the first, is a finance guy. Kevin, the last, works on a farm and sleeps in a tent. One of them is an old soul and the other calls Mom often, just to chat. She said at some point she just threw her hands up and let those boys wander off and hoped they came home without injuries. “You just can’t control that!” she declared, possibly hoping to defend her seemingly unconcerned mentality. I thought she was perfect.

We played more games, ate more bacon, and stayed up late chatting while Kevin strummed his guitar. We celebrated Hayden's 32nd birthday with two cakes, two pies, half a cheesecake, and a box of cookies. It felt like Hayden's 8th birthday, with all those toys and bug bites around. I wished I could stay forever. 

Our drive home was much quieter than the one going up. Brett drove almost wordlessly, stopping only once for some Labor Day traffic. I tried to boost morale with incessant chatting about all of my personal problems and the ways in which I think life could be better. They shut me up quickly and instead we told a story, line by line going in a circle around the car and it had us all in stitches. 

It's the simple things.