Family Reunion

I just spent a long weekend at Newport Beach where my (extended) family rented out a beach house for our biennial family reunion. We've been doing these for twenty years, and even as cousins get married and have children, we still manage to get nearly everyone there, exceptions generally being those who are on missions or otherwise unavailable (such as my brother who is in transit from one air force base to the next). It always surprises me a little when friends tell me that they haven't even met some of there cousins, because even though we are scattered across the western United States, we're all relatively close and I can't imagine things being otherwise.

I have to admit, though, I had some doubts about this particular reunion, especially my first night there. The simple act of ordering pizza turned into something of an ordeal, and we didn't eat until well after nine. Room assignments were made pretty quickly and as one of the few unmarried cousins of marriagable age I found myself stuck on a hideaway bed with my younger sister in the main living area. This meant first that I was unable to go to bed until everyone else had left for their own sleeping quarters. On top of that, the mattress was paper thin, very springy, and sloped in both directions. It was also far too small for two people, even for someone like myself who tends not to move at all once I've settled in for the night. I spent an entire restless night feeling like I was clinging to the side of a small hill trying to keep myself from rolling down the slope into my sister. And all I had to look forward to in the morning was an all day trip to Disneyland on the Saturday before the 4th of July - a day that I imagined would be among the most crowded days of the year. I like Disneyland, and I like my family, but I hate crowds and I hate lines and I hate standing for long periods of time without moving and I hate not having alone time. So on day one I was already anticipating my return home in three days.

Fortunately things went uphill from there.

Disneyland really wasn't so bad. Fastpasses made the lines and the crowds much more tolerable, and my cousin and I happily took the red role in creating plans of attack for making our way to all the rides our group wanted to visit, within the limitations of the Fastpass time constraints, while everyone else very happily and (mostly) unquestioningly submitted to our redness and followed us from place to place. As green as I am, in potentially stressful situations I am much happier when I can take charge. The day turned out to be quite fun. My brother and my cousin's husband set a record for spinning teacups and have blistered hands to prove it. My uncle conspired to have one of the Disney "cast members" force my 6'7" father into a life vest for our canoe ride around the lake (which our crew of eighteen family members in matching t-shirts completed in record time). I lost miserably on the Buzz Lightyear laser shoot-out game, even though I was one of the few who realized that the laser guns had sights for aiming. We caught a sneak preview of the new and improved Space Mountain. We watched evening fireworks from the exit of the Indiana Jones ride, away from the crowds. I was exhausted by the end (enough that I had no trouble sleeping that night in spite of the mattress and the drunken neighbors), but I was feeling much better about being there.

The rest of the trip was more relaxing. On Sunday morning most of us attended one of the local wards for sacrament meeting and then made the ten-minute drive to see the new temple. I wasn't quite expecting what I saw - it's not white, and the architecture is somewhat reminiscent of the Spanish missions. It's very pretty, and it was too bad we could only look from a distance, as the grounds are still closed to the public.

After that, Sunday stopped feeling like Sunday. We ate lunch at the beach house and then walked across the street to the beach, where we flew kites and built sand scultpures for most of the rest of the afternoon. I have discovered recently that activities I enjoyed as a child are even more fun as an adult (like floating paper boats down a river). I don't think I have flown a kite since I was six, or younger, and I think I had more fun this time than I ever had before. And the sand sculpture I made with my aunt (a coiled snake) was probably one of the most detailed sand sculptures I have created. Even though my mother poked fun at our "cinnamon roll," I felt quite pleased with the end product.

The next day, after a barefoot run on the beach with my brother, my dad organized a mass effort to build a giant sand castle. Most people came and went, but I was one of a handful of faithful who worked for a good solid two hours or more, from start to finish. I helped dig the trench and pile dirt for awhile, and then claimed the southwest turret as my own and built it up to somewhere between three and four feet high, and a couple of feet in diameter. To be honest, I don't usually have the longest attention span, but somehow the combination of a concrete goal, physical labor, problem solving (how to create a sufficiently tall tower with relatively straight sides), and artistry kept me occupied so that I hardly noticed how much time I spent. I was quite devastated when a whole portion of my wall collapsed, and although my repair work left it looking decent enough, the catastrophe snapped me out of my enthusiastic endeavor and I didn't put as much detail into the top of my tower as I might have otherwise. A dog leaped over the castle later on and destroyed our hard work, and this morning I woke up aching all over from the hours spent bending and straightening and digging and shaping, but we got some good pictures and admiration from passersby, so it was worth it.

My brother, sister and I headed home for Provo that evening. We weren't the only ones to leave on the fourth, but most of the family stuck around for the night to celebrate. By the time we made our way to our airport shuttle, the Newport Beach crowd was already surging through the streets on foot and on bike, in masses of bare flesh and drunkenness, and the three of us were actually quite relieved to be on our way out. One of my cousins had asked someone at the grocery store what Newport Beach on the 4th was like, and the person she asked responded, "Imagine New Orleans on New Year's Eve." Our nice Mormon family was probably a bit out of place there, and while they sounded like they were having fun when we called them last night, I doubt they got much sleep. The party scene that we left behind has always baffled me a little. Even if I didn't possess some of my socially and spiritually ingrained moral inhibitions, I can't imagine that I could possibly find pleasure in staying up all night drinking and dancing and goodness-knows-what-else among masses and masses of people and noise. It just makes me shudder just to think about it, and I felt much, much happier in the near-dead airport, and then alone in my apartment with only muffled sounds of fireworks and celebration.

I stayed up a little later than I expected, but only because I was reading a book, with my pajamas on and bedroom door closed. The weekend was fun, and I had a great time with my family. But it's always nice to get home and be by myself again in the end.