Thursday, August 5, 2010

NY State of Mind

When I moved to Colorado (has it really been 13 years!?) I vowed that I would never skip an important family celebration because of geography. Add to that my commitment to not just surviving cancer but conquering cancer - the difference, I believe, being that I will not let this take anything more away from me than is absolutely necessary. So, I may not miss that six inches of colon, but I absolutely would not miss my brother's 30th birthday weekend.

It was a very quick trip, a total of about 72 hours on the Island, but just what we needed.

A little family time at Jones Beach Friday. Hot dogs, cold beer, feet in the sand, waves rolling in, watching Van and Keira try to figure out this new substance under foot. And if it wasn't already perfect enough, after the playground and ice cream at Friendlies, there was a Motley Crue cover band at the little ampitheatre along the boardwalk. I'm on my way, I'm on my waaaa-aaay, home sweet home...

Saturday was Stephen's big day. A bus full of family and pals spent the day touring vineyards and a vodka distillery, sharing our favorite Stephen tales along the way. From what I can remember, we were all good and boozy by the time the bus dropped off us at the 'rents place. Now, at 30, Stephen's friends are only really just getting into the married with kids phase, and so across the group they seem to be doing a pretty impressive job of keeping the early 20s lifestyle going. As would be expected of any good Metz bash back in the day, there was a lot of tossing of bodies into the pool, Matty spent most of the late night naked, and there was the requisite beer chugging contest - the winner of which was, in a former life, the 1998 Ward Melville chugging champ, but is now by day a respectable high school math teacher. At 4 am, I could still hear the last of the bunch giggling out on the deck. I wondered how they have the energy and when Steve and I grew so old, but at 2 pm the next day, when several of them were still asleep upstairs, I was reminded that they have no children...

Sunday, the entire DeKoskie clan made the long trek down from K-town, along with more local family and friends. Pool time for the kids, bbq, good conversation and lots of hugs and photo ops. Is it me or was Donovan the only child that spent most of the day clad in a diaper or altogether naked?

By Sunday night I was torched, but it was the kind of complete, deep and happy exhaustion one gets after a vacation full of laughs and love. Thanks to all who planned, traveled, cooked and otherwise contributed to make the weekend as spectacular as it was.