The guests had been treated to four straight days of sameness. Blue skies in the morning, blue skies in the afternoon, and blue skies into the evening. A sparkling sunset to the West, just as a bold moon would rise in the East. The sun was hot, but the umbrella shade and the breeze took care of any excess. These days were all the same, and they were leisurely and full. It shouldn’t have been such a big deal to replace that scenery for just a few hours.
I’ve found that I don’t like to cook for my family anymore. My wife eats some, sure, but more out of duty to remain alive than because she likes the way a particular food item tastes. My kids eat anything, so it isn’t much congratulation to make something that they eat and declare to be good. This is why I don’t like cooking for them anymore. While my desire to cook has waned some in recent years, I still enjoy the process and the outcome.
I wouldn’t have suggested cooking at my house on day one of the visit. My aunt and my uncle and my cousin wouldn’t have been up for such an initial abstention from the lake, and that’s why I waited for those first few days. I let them bake under the summer sun, and swim from the pier. I let them lounge under those umbrellas and boat over those waters. Had the days been iffy and the intended cooking day been delightful, I would have pulled the plug at the last minute, preferring that they soak under a rare sun rather than sit at my house at subject themselves to my dinner plan. But the days were all the same, all bright and blue, and by Sunday evening I figured enough had been enough.
My cousin appreciates the cooking process in the same way that I do, and so we had made a plan to cook dinner on Sunday evening. The family, both mine and the extended, soaked under sun and swam the day away. Because I dislike cooking in my parents’ home, and much prefer the company of my own pots and pans, my own knives and my own grill, I suggested that the cooking and the dining should take place at my house. When I suggested this it was around noon. There would be five hours left at the lake, so the out-of-towners could bask and gobble up that view and float in those waters. I figured that would be enough.
My house is quite delightful. It’s not extra fancy, because I’m in real estate, but it’s nice and new-ish and the flowers are in bloom and the grass mowed in alternating lines, dark and light. My air conditioning is cold and thorough. My parents house is old, and the air conditioning either doesn’t work or my father still won’t let it work, and there’s a musty smell that wafts up from the basement. I only asked that they trade that house for mine for a couple of hours, maybe two and a half, tops. It shouldn’t have been such a big deal, but my house is in the country, surrounded by flowers and trees and that striped lawn. My parents’ house is on that lake, with a lakeside porch and pier-kept boats and chairs of varying makes and models littering the pier.
When I suggested that the dinner be at my house, it didn’t go over well. Why would we go there? How far away is it? Will we be safe there? What if we just went to buy groceries and cooked them down here, at the lake, in that musty house up there? Confusion was everywhere. I didn’t think it would matter, because of the long days that preceded that one, those days where the sun and the pier and the boats and the water were everything. Wouldn’t a break be nice? Doesn’t anyone want to see my sunflowers?
In the end, I had my way, but the dissent was noticeable. My older brother, the one who turns 40 this week, refused to make the difficult five minute drive from the lake to my house. Everyone who did come was disoriented, wondering where the lake was and why I’d live out here. Having eaten dinner, everyone who did come left in a hurry, returning quickly to the lake and the pier, so they might purify themselves in those waters. In the end, they obliged me and my house, but to say they would have preferred leftovers lakeside than fresh fare farmside is to state the obvious. Sure my house is nice, but it isn’t on the lake.