| | 12:32 AM - la familia! July 1 marked the kick-off of our second annual Geddis family reunion in Geneva-on-the-Lake, Ohio. Geneva is this strange, amazing place where my dad and his sister went on summer vacations when they were youngsters; their father, my Pap-Pap (whom I never met), fell in love with the place and eventually bought a cottage there, which he aptly nicknamed The Ged-a-way. Hyuck, hyuck. (They weren't the only ones, folks--every cottage up their has a special name--it's just that ours was the punniest.) My Pap-Pap lived there every summer, and my cousins, Aunt Evie's three daughters, would live up there with him. They're all older than my sister and me, so they have different memories of what it was like to live the Geneva lifestyle. Julie/Rose, my sister, started traveling to GOTL when she was 9 or so, in 1984. She accompanied my dad on a road trip to Pittsburgh, his hometown. From that point, they'd drive the 2 1/2 hours to Geneva and stay in the cottage. As she got a little older, he'd leave her for a while with whichever cousin was staying up there with her friends. This is where Julie learned about things we'll file under the categories of "adult subjects" and "alcohol-related matters." Poor, innocent Rosa.
When I was 9, I was deemed old enough to be the new travel partner for my dad. Rose was to stay back in Georgia with my mom for the two weeks I'd be up north with my dad. Then, the next year, 1990, Julie would go up while I stayed in Georgia. Instead, I said something cute and charming that convinced my parents to let her come along, too. So Julie & I clambered into the Toyowagon (dear lord) and Dukie drove us up to the Ged-a-way. I still have the notebook somewhere in which I began the Great American Novel that was to tell the adventures of my first Great American Road Trip. I designed a cover page for "Part 1: On the Way." As with most of my projects, I never got too far into it.
As the years went on, my three Pittsburgh cousins stopped their crazy weekends of debauchery at the lake and stayed more frequently in Pittsburgh. My dad had bought the cottage off of his mom sometime in the late 80s or early 90s when she was wanting to get rid of it--her first husband, my Pap-Pap, had been the one whose heart was in the place, and he had died in the late 1970s. By the mid-1990s, my dad made a sad decision: he got rid of the cottage. It wasn't a real estate investment by any means, as he didn't rent it out to people; he just had it so that family could use it whenever they wanted to. But the family rarely wanted it. He sold it despite some protest, and the family stopped going as frequently.
About two years ago, my cousin Beverly & my sister Julie (whom I call "Rose," in case you hadn't caught on) started trying to plan a family reunion. They wanted it to be in Geneva-on-the-Lake during 4th of July weekend 2005 but were having trouble finding a place for all of our family (my dad, his sister, their offspring, and their families) to stay. At last they let the ball drop. I was in the midst of searching for a suitable locale for our AmeriCorps reunion, so I started looking up cabins and cottages in Geneva while I was at it. Found an adorable place called the Anchor Cottages & Motel available the week after the 4th, held the rooms, told the family they had a week to make a decision, and the fire under them really got everyone going. So in 2005 we had reunion one.
It was such a success that the day we got back from it, my dad made a call to the cottage owners and booked all six cottages for 2006. And the 2006 reunion is what I just returned from. How was that for background info?
Here are the photos I was going to introduce before I went off on my tangent. I'm glad--for my sake, not necessarily for yours--that I did.
our welcome sign
this is how we greeted my sister
my dad is taking line dancing classes (!). here he's teaching my cousins his tricks.
this is me with my sister. i love love love love her. 1 Comment |
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