Magic & Curses

What a weekend.

It was such a blend of beauty and fun and love and also pain and fear - I'm totally mixed up. I joined some knitting friends up at Peggy's cabin on Lake Ida, and it was a sublime weekend.

We knitted, ate, laughed a LOT, drank a bit and overall rested. REST! Here's Peggy (center) with daughter Christina (left) and Ellen (right) working on some fine knitting!

I was in heaven, and I'm so grateful to Ellen, who invited me to the group, and Peggy and her wonderful family who put UP with a group of nutty knitters all weekend!

I was up for Friday night, then Saturday I came back to the Twin Cities to see Maxie at his piano recital, where he wowed the crowd and made me cry. Oh, heck, I would have cried at a mosquito bite this weekend. And at one point I did, alone.

Hannah was supposed to take part in the recital, too, but she had a camping trip with the Breakthrough program, which definitely took precedence! She took some wonderful photos of her friends, here's a nice shot of a cat that was hanging around the camp.

Then I took Max back up to the lake where he immediately donned his bathing suit and jumped in! Gerry stayed home to pick up Hannah on Sunday in case I didn't get back in time, and also to work on my new office (we've decided to give Max the larger office room as his bedroom, I'll be taking his small little bedroom as the office - a much better solution!)

I had no small amount of guilt at leaving him behind, but he insisted and in some part I think he kind of relished his time here alone. Maybe I'm projecting that.

Max had never skied before, and I had my doubts, but with a friend's help he gave it an excellent shot and succeeded!

Annie took such patient, loving time with Max and helped him get up on water skis the third time he tried! She's an amazing teacher, and that was miraculous to me, who took a whole summer to get up on skis when I was 14.

Max showed me how much he'd learned at kayak camp last year. Another knitting friend, Kathy, accompanied him on a sunset kayak adventure (going farther than this mom would have ordinarily allowed him to go alone - he was in heaven!)

But with all of the joy this weekend, I felt that I was carrying around a 500 pound weight.

On the way up I got a call from my cousin. Her breast cancer has spread to two vertebrae and possibly her kidneys, more tests to come. I keep shoving this back in my head, and when I drive it comes bubbling out, welling up, tumbling out. So much good and fun and wonderful this weekend, so much bad and troubling, too.

I drove home today and my cousin's pain, along with news of another [young] family member who's begining his fight with the C word, left me feeling so bereft.

I just need to knit alone for a bit.

The weekend was a welcomed reprieve - yarn was most excellent, and the loons were lovely.