I understand the Big Chill now.
For the past 5 years me and my crew of friends have spent Labor Day weekend at a cabin. Well, one time it was a ranch by the beach another time it was a house in Fremont, but you get the idea.
This year almost didn't happen because the place I rented was sold a month before the trip. I was ready to bag the whole thing, but one of the group stepped in a found a rad place that we will probably go to next year.
When these trips first started it was because I lived far away from all of these people and it was an opportunity to hang out uninterrupted. We moved back to the bay area and since I liked the getaway, I wanted to start a tradition. It seemed like people wanted to go, but until this trip happened I really didn't know that they enjoyed the trips as much as I did. They are a lot of work to plan and it was nice to find out that the group liked going.
Since these trips started there has been cancer, a hit and run, a divorce, a new coupling, job changes, and all kinds of other stuff. One of the cabin goers told me that she made it a point to be in the now. Put all the life stuff away and enjoy what is happening at the moment. Wise person.
The first trip was not very fun for my kid, she was 3 and didn't like being out of her element (or dogs, which there were 3, or the beach, which I made her go to), this year she was a rock star of independence. She tried the zip line, swam in the lake, slept by herself, and only had two melt downs.
Both from being tired and probably hungry.
Thinking about the kid, I really like that she gets to spend time with my friend's kids. I enjoy watching them experience things together. Their comfort level of bossing around some of the childless adults is amusing to us parents and it is nice to see them decompress from their day-to-day just like we do and enjoy our cabin trips.
I tell my kid that the people who go to the cabin with us are our inside family. Meaning they know my thoughts and feelings and history. Of the group, my husband has known me the least amount of time and I have known him for 22 years.
There isn't any cocaine use, people lending out their spouse to get someone pregnant, and we don't have a TV star among us. But the idea that these people have a history and we (the viewer) are capturing a few pages in their lives where they are all together is what I like about it and how I relate it to our yearly cabin trip.
