Twice a year my family gets together – my brother and sister, nieces and nephews – one get together happens in the summer time and one at Christmas. Sometimes, we don’t actually all get together because of the snow, someone’s work schedule or last Christmas, it was my sister’s open heart surgery.
This past weekend, we were together and recalled a lot of good memories and made a few new ones. We swam in Vicki and Dave’s pool – hopefully, that is one of the new traditions. We drove by places in Bayfield where my sister and I worked when we were students. Much of Bayfield is very different now but the park in the square which is really a circle is still there as are the two oldest hotels.
Then we drove to Goderich and passed by the bake shop where my mother always took us and where she always bought donuts or cream puffs. The burger place my dad liked so much is gone – the result of a tornado back about 3 years ago. The Goderich square, which is also a circle, looks very different since all of the big trees were destroyed by the storm at the same time as the burger restaurant. We look different now too.
The day ended as many summer weekends of the past – a camp fire, conversation and pie irons. (A pie iron is a way of making an individual pie with bread and filling toasted in the iron over the campfire or a grilled cheese sandwich toasted the same way.) We are already looking forward to next time we gather around the fire.
