...or to chill (translation: "not be so stressed out about everything"), as my teen daughter advised me at the beginning of our family vacation to North Carolina the week of July 4th. I have family there near the coast, and many of my mother's siblings and children travelled in from the midwest for a mini-family reunion.
It didn't take long for our fun to be both tested and stimulated.
My aunt lives by a small lake, known as White Lake for its white sandy bottom and shallow depths. The lake is usually pristine, and our last reunion there five years ago was mostly spent basking for hours in its cool and gentle waters.
When we arrived there Monday, the air was hot and humid--typical July weather for southeastern North Carolina. Our cousins were already in the water, so we eagerly walked down to check things out. And yes, there they were. My cousin from Utah, Little Joe, with his two young children bobbing in their floats and enjoying the lake with my sister and her daughter--all toddlers, wet and smiling in the...wait, that's green water, not clear water.
Gross! What's happened to the water?
All the activity--jetskis, boats, crowded docks--of the holiday weekend had churned up large amounts of algae that had collected on the shallow bottom.
But the little ones already in the water beamed and gurgled affably, unaffected by the seaweedy substances that clung to their legs and swimsuits.
"Come on in--the water's fine!" encouraged Little Joe.
And with that, our fun-filled week began. Once we overcame the greenness of the water (not as bad in the slightly deeper parts as in the very shallow), cheery splashes and gleeful tosses of the water set off peals of laughter that carried over into ice cube chases in the house and water gun battles between cousins who were virtual strangers just hours earlier.
We lived. We loved. And we laughed.
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