Weekend update, plus some odds & ends

It's Sunday afternoon, and I'm not supposed to be home right now.  

On Friday morning, we headed up to dh & BIL's cousin's cottage/lake house for the weekend, with BIL & SIL, as we have around this time of year for the previous two years. This time, Older Nephew, his wife and Little Great-Nephew came along too (in a separate car).  :)  We've always had a great time there, and we were SO looking forward to spending time with LGN and introducing him to things like fishing off the dock, boat rides, toasting marshmallows over a fire pit, and looking for deer.  

We did do all those things and more, and had so much fun... while it lasted.   

Friday afternoon/evening, Older Nephew confessed that he was running a bit of a fever -- and had been, on & off, for the past MONTH (!). :(  His eyes also had a slightly yellowish/jaundiced cast to them. 

You'll recall that Older Nephew was BIL's organ donor back in July. Unlike BIL -- who really had the more major operation -- his recovery has, unfortunately, been a little more bumpy. He had a setback (which I wrote about here), which necessitated a non-surgical procedure (inserting a stent to correct a leaky valve).  He was due to head back to work shortly.   

Dh's cousin's wife produced some Tylenol, BIL plunged into an immediate funk, and we all urged Older Nephew to get himself checked out, ASAP.  Yesterday (Saturday) afternoon, he got in touch with the transplant clinic and they told him he needed to come to emergency at the hospital (in downtown Toronto -- about 2 & 1/2 hours from the cottage), ASAP. They started packing, and they were on the road before 5 o'clock. (They admitted him for tests, and he's now waiting for a(nother!) remedial procedure to replace the stent. He should be home again in a couple of days' time.)  

BIL wanted to go with them. (At first, he suggested he should take Older Nephew himself.  Naturally, he feels a lot of guilt because Older Nephew is only in this situation because he stepped up as a donor when BIL needed one.) Older Nephew's Wife insisted she was going with him (they were taking LGN to her mother's first before heading to the hospital), and that they could handle the situation themselves. (She privately told dh she has enough anxieties of her own to deal with;  she didn't feel like she could handle BIL's anxieties and dramas on top of that too.) (Adding to the "Seriously??"  aspect of the whole episode -- they were celebrating their 7th (!) wedding anniversary that weekend!)  

The house was very quiet after they left. I settled on the couch with a book while BIL & his cousin watched sports on TV. There was a ham in the oven for dinner (the wife sliced off a bit & made sandwiches for Older Nephew & family to take & eat on the road);  we had potatos and squash roasting in the embers of the campfire. It was almost ready, and everything smelled WONDERFUL. I was already hungry! 

I should have guessed what would happen next. :(  Dh was in our bedroom (supposedly having a nap, but in reality fretting about Older Nephew).  I was in the living room reading, with BIL & his cousin on the couches watching sports on TV. After a while, BIL disappeared (his & SIL's room was downstairs).  

Then, the cousin's wife comes upstairs from below, and tells him, "They're leaving." Cousin started to object ("why??")  and she just shook her head said, "You know he's not going to be happy staying here now." (Yep.)  

I closed up my book, went into the bedroom & told dh, "Apparently we're leaving. You'd better go talk to your brother, I'll start getting our stuff together."  

Dh started tearing our sheets off the bed & stuffing things into bags, willy-nilly. I was trying to pack with some semblance of order, and he's telling me to hurry up. He grabbed the bags to take out to the car as I filled them. When I came out of the bedroom, they were all outside already.  I didn't even think to go to the bathroom before we left. BIL was already in the car and the trunk was already closed. We climbed in & off we went. It wasn't even 6 o'clock yet, and I'll bet less than half an hour (max) had gone by since Cousin's Wife walked into the living room to drop the bombshell.

The car was HOT from sitting out in the sun all day -- but the roads around the cottage were all gravel and we were kicking up tons of dust -- so we couldn't open the car windows until we got into town and onto pavement, and the a/c was taking its time to kick in. I was sweltering, and I was starving -- the ham in the oven smelled SO good (I kept thinking, "Couldn't we at least have stayed for dinner??" It was almost ready...! -- would another hour or so there have made any difference??).  Cousin's Wife had thoughtfully made some sandwiches for us too, and they smelled good too -- but I was NOT going to be the one to bring up food just then!  I did open up a can of ginger ale she had included in the bag, because I was so thirsty. (Dh helpfully dumped all the water out of our water bottles before we left...!)  Of course that meant I really needed to go to the bathroom by the time we finally got home...!  

It was a pretty quiet trip home. BIL drove like a maniac;  I think the speed limit was 100 km/ph (about 60 mph) & he was doing 120 most of the way (70+). We were home before 8:30 p.m. 

SIL told us to take two of the sandwiches when we were getting out of the car, and we ate them when we got home (the ham was SO good!).  We started doing some laundry, and it was at that point I realized I'd left my towel hanging on a hook behind the door in our bedroom -- then a while later, I realized a pillowcase was also missing too. (Cousin's Wife found the towel and I've asked her to look for the pillowcase -- I'll get them the next time we see each other.)  If I'd been able to pack properly myself, I don't think this would have happened, but dh was just throwing things into bags & then taking them out to the car and I had no idea what was where. (eyeroll)  

All this aside...!  We had a good time (as usual! -- until it all fall apart, anyway...!).  We get along very well with these cousins, and (fortunately for us!), they love to entertain  (and they're very good at it too!), and their cottage/lake home is gorgeous, especially at this time of year. The weather was great -- a little cool, but clear & sunny. The fall colours were just amazingly beautiful, and seemed to get even more so overnight while we were there. LGN was so cute, and he was having so much fun -- he adored their teenaged son and followed him around like a puppy, lol.  (Fortunately, the teenager didn't mind, lol.)  

I'm just sorry it had to end, and end in the way that it did.  :(  

LGN & dh, fishing off the dock at dh's cousin's cottage.
(You can see some of the fall colours starting to emerge, 
across the lake.) 

*** *** *** 

Other stuff from the past week:  

• The son of one of dh's cousins turned 25 last week, and the family WhatsApp group exploded in birthday wishes for him ("Happy quarter-century!").  I normally leave at least a perfunctory "happy birthday" (and have for him, in other years) -- but this time around, I couldn't bring myself to do it. No offense to the birthday guy -- it's nothing personal -- but -- well, YOU all know. I can't help but think of the young woman who would also be turning 25 in November, and whose special day (like all the others) will go completely unmarked, except in my heart & dh's.... 
• I spent the weekend before this last one (into last week) wild with jealousy, seeing all the posts & photos from the Storyhouse Childless event in Chester in the U.K.  :)  (Which -- once again -- reinforces my gut feeling that the Brits are MILES ahead of North Americans, when it comes to progressive thinking & action on the childless front -- as well as pregnancy loss, (in)fertility, menopause, and other such issues!)   
• It seem to be the topic du jour lately:  In her "Terrible, Thanks for Asking" Substack (she has a podcast by the same name), Nora McInerny and "Team Terrible" asked childless and childfree people (and the distinction between the two terms is made clear!) "What do you wish your parent friends would do differently?"  ("I'm still allowed to be tired:  And other thoughts from your childfree/childless friends.") 
• Nora recently recorded a podcast episode ("Still a Family") with a childless-not-by-choice couple. I haven't listened to it yet, but apparently the response was HUGE.  
• She also suggests several books -- mostly from the childfree perspective -- and invites readers to add to the list. 
• Sara Petersen from "In Pursuit of Clean Countertops" also commented on the recent article from The Cut. Unfortunately, most of her post ("Kids as Friendship Bombs") is paywalled -- and (erk!) I actually wound up coughing up a subscription because I was so curious about what she had to say. (My Substack subscriptions now outnumber my paper magazine subscriptions, lol.) Happily, this was the sort of piece I've said several times that I wished she'd write, making the connection between the idealization of motherhood and how that affects those of us who aren't mothers (for whatever reason). 
• I emailed her, saying essentially what I said above, and got a very nice response from her, thanking me for writing and for engaging in her work "so thoughtfully." 
• A couple of excerpts (boldfaced emphasis my own):  

Did we all read the essay in The Cut on friendships between people with kids and people without kids?

Before I even read it, I knew it would be polarizing simply because it is about people with kids and people without kids, which means it's at least in part about motherhood. And in the US, motherhood is always polarizing; it's both an identity and an occupation. It’s a gender marker, a labor of love, and an integral component of capitalism. And (in addition to marriage) it’s also proof of “good womanhood,” which is the biggest problem of all.

...The problem is a lack of structural support for caregivers AND the toxic expectation that motherhood is every woman’s “natural” destiny. Women without children have every reason to feel a certain level of alienation and resentment towards a culture which still views them as selfish aberrations, and mothers have every reason to feel a certain level of alienation and resentment towards a culture which tells them they’re doing the most important job in the world without providing them any structural support for that job. 

Motherhood is indisputably difficult. But so is choosing a life as a woman that deviates (in any way!) from culturally ingrained gender assumptions. My hot take about the piece in The Cut is that yeah, of course, people without kids feel like shit when their parent friends assume they should be content with whatever friendship scraps are left over after all the diapers have been changed and the soccer practices have been attended. And of course parents (mothers in particular) feel like shit when they feel excised from adult-only social networks because one of the worst parts of becoming a mother is the potential erasure of self. 

...the fracturing of friendships between parents and non-parents is often less an individual choice (although sometimes individuals make unthoughtful choices!) and more often a reflection of a society that doesn’t make room for any kind of woman.

• In the New York Times, columnist David French muses on loneliness, loss of belonging, friendship and the value of just "Being There." (Gift link.)  Some thoughtful comments, too. 
  
• In a recent "Links I Love" post, Modern Mrs. Darcy shared an article from Esquire: "Inside Richard Osman's Mystery Empire."  (Spoilers included for "The Last Devil to Die," the latest in his "Thursday Murder Club" series.)  Sarah Weinman -- who is, she reveals, from Ottawa! -- perfectly captures Osman's charm and what makes the books so very readable. Sample passage:  

...Enduring characters are what keep me coming back to authors and their mystery series.

When I first read Osman's debut, The Thursday Murder Club, a year after it had already stormed best-seller lists in England and elsewhere, I felt the same zing! as I did with those formative favorites and various subsequent crime novels in the two-plus decades since. I was catapulted back into reading purely for pleasure, which has become a rarity when so much of my time is devoted to reading for research, work, or critical purposes.

Authors who can reconnect people with the primal emotion of pleasure reading are worth our close attention. Commercial success doesn't just happen in a vacuum, after all—it takes a whole life, sometimes several iterations of that life, to get there, even as it often boils down to a simple idea: if you write what you want to read, and you enjoy doing so, others will want to read and enjoy what you write, too. Richard Osman knows this better than almost anybody.

(Here's my recent review of "The Last Devil to Die.")