SevenSenses

“Things do not change; we change.”
“Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.”
-Henry David Thoreau


As we approached the last month of 2018, I sat in a coffee shop to get into written word all that has been floating through my mind over the past two months. In October, the family and I headed up to the cabin in Vermont where we have been visiting for the past few years. As we all move forward building our own lives, the cabin has become a refuge. Our way of holding onto the core family unit.  There is no internet, no TV, and no plumbing! But despite the primitive facilities, we still manage to have an excess of fun. Competition and the pull of work or play diminish, leaving a space for us to be simply and fully us.  I realize that this bubble of “we” has a shelf life. In-laws will become a reality before we know it and then this era of us as we know it will come to end to make room for a new delightful definition of family.

This year, however, school work got in the way and the cabin was missing a few campers.  Not to worry though! We were going camping the next weekend, something we hadn’t done as a family since the kids were very young. 

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Despite the near decade gap in trips, camping presented a similar experience then as it does now, only in those days we were escaping sports teams and overdone birthday parties instead of full time jobs.  In truth, we probably only enjoyed a few sacred years of family camping before the oldest became teens inevitably becoming too cool to camp as a family. Still it always felt like a long held tradition that had gone on for eons if only from the memories we made. It so happened that the weekend we chose to go was also Dad’s 60th birthday, so the disappointment of not having all of us together for the cabin was softened by the knowledge that we would all be together in an old tradition the following weekend.

Ah alas, as often is the case, we would have been better served leaving the memories immortalized in our minds. Although the campsite was wonderful don’t get me wrong! Perched alongside the Pemigewasset River with New England fall foliage at near perfect peak, it was almost exactly as I remembered. But once again life responsibilities meant that we went up in shifts rather than as a whole unit. Half of us pitched camp (let’s be real – camping is work), then the others joined later. Our first day was undoubtedly the best weather, but the night was FRIGID.  Sleeping bags failed to contain necessary body heat, two air mattresses deflated and all were cranky in the morning. The envisioned pancakes and bacon breakfast turned into a failed attempt at instant coffee and boxed cereal and the hike, though lovely, left us a slew of tired bodies staring apprehensively at a greying sky. We had a decision to make- commit to one more night or bail. The consensus was stay and camp (Oh Boy), so off we went to the Walmart a couple miles from the campground. We picked up a brand spanking new air mattress and warm pjs for those with lesser quality sleeping bags. Hindsight being 20-20, we would have been better served packing up and playing board games at home, but we didn’t.  We persevered; rain fell; we cooked hot dogs (even vegan ones) on sticks. We lost two campers who decided it would be best to head home and take care of the puppies, but the rest of us bundled up and gathered steadfastly around the fire. That night, as I lay my head on my pillow, moist with dew and scented with a blend of tent must and smoke, I proclaimed that this would be the last night of my life that I would ever sleep in a tent.

The next morning we packed the remaining camping gear up and effectively closed the book on family tent camping … we are decidedly cabin campers now.  Our children will one day begin their own families and start their own camping traditions because, despite this being the final camp for this generation, the memories we’ve made -both good and bad- are memories we’ve made together. Family traditions we’ve handed down that will undoubtedly carry over into the next cluster of clans.

It is now the beginning of 2019, we have turned the page on another year and as I reflect on New Year intentions, I also reflect on the past year, the past decade, the past era. 2018 was the first year that the full seven did not wake up together on Christmas morning. In one year, I lost a job and started a new one.  One child completed her teen years and started her twenties. My husband closed out his 50s and started his 60s. My son became old enough to vote and perform in bars. One daughter started a new career in healthcare. Another daughter left Boston and started a new home outside of college housing, and yet another daughter is preparing for her transition from college to “life”.   

We are in a constant state of transition and evolution. So often we think in terms of tradition: holding onto the past, embracing that which is familiar and makes us feel good, safe and stable, or transition: changing, becoming something new and unknown. My intention for the next year is to see these as partners rather than opposites. To honor traditions, understanding what sparks those warm, nostalgic feelings, and to get to the core of why we wish to hold onto them. Take that core energy which helped us to thrive and apply it to our evolution. Apply that essence of being into the transition to the next experience as we create new traditions that will one day evolve and transition to more.