Home from the Mountains

We just spent the week in the Mountains. For close to a week, our orbit consisted of the tennis courts, swimming pools, the volleyball court, and the arcade. But most intensely, we wore deep grooves on the steps between each of the two houses we rented, side by side.

The kids ran in the pack of a dozen cousins all week. They developed their own rituals like "taking a tub" in the condo hot tub after each pool visit. Also, rounding up a game of Ladderball after dinner, Larry poking his head through the sliding glass door saying, "Yo, I heard someone say, "Ladderbattle!" And also "Dance Island" on the little dock platform, where before you jump in, you are required to booty-shake. There was the pack of preschool girls affectionately referred to as "The Hello Kitty Club." There was the pack of primary-school boys who went by the "Super Smash Cousins." And then there were the teenagers who texted and and fakebooked but who were refreshingly present and dialed-in to the whole family-bonding scenario.

Elli, the oldest cousin who was there, recently graduated from college but joked that she felt like she was a member of the HK club because she found herself watching their movies, while eating popcorn and brushing her hair. But maybe that's essential in the making of a good vacation: finding ways to connect and take part of each set. Painting nails while downloading songs with the teens. Counting tokens and tickets with the Super Smashers at 10:30 at night just before the counter closes. Cutting fruit plates for the HK Club at the breakfast bar while they discuss Abby Cadabby and whether or not she's a baby.

And all of us were doing it. My eldest brother, a veteran of two wars tenderly petting and doting on their new puppy, Rudy. My second -eldest brother, an ivy-league lawyer and Mensa member, guarding his "Old School Jams Part 3 CD" with semi-paranoid care. And my fourth brother, a debtless Harvard phD kickboxing his heart out in the backyard with my ivy-league little sister and mother of two, recounting her bruises with morbid pride.

Elements of a Legaspi-vacation: rounds of emails about food weeks before (enormous egg bakes, 3-heads of lettuce salads, and the most obscenely big roast beef ever, a sheet cake for the inevitable birthdays), swimming every day possible, playing normal sports( tennis, volleyball), but also amping those games up to intense and semi-outrageous competitions (Ladderbattle that is basically dodgeball with golfballs and Newcome that is basically volleyball but with catching and precision-spiking), Bible quizzes (oral interviews about the Miracles and the Parables but also theological inventories that get at their character), Karaoke (singing into my Dad's fancy Korean microphone that scores you), and crazy dance parties (picture Kid n' Play meets Bella Dance-a-rella meets Capoeira.)

Because we have been together so long, I no longer feel like my husband's a neophyte, he participates completely in all the crazy things we do. Last night, driving to the arcade for the last time, a bunch of us were packed into the minivan, toddlers on laps sans carseats, teens recounting Scrubs and Lost lines, my sis asks me if I have any cash. I say I don't. Geoff, in the front seat says he does. My sister's husband says he does, too. From the driver's seat, he looks back and asks, "Aren't you glad you married us?"

The answer is: Yes, I am glad my sister and I married each of you adventurous and semi-crazy men. And I am glad that you married us, this contradictory and funky family.