I spent the morning getting ready for a Scottish invasion from Maxville, Ontario. I pulled the anchor just after 1:00pm and headed for Chrysler Park Marina which was just about a kilometer west of where I had spent the past couple of days. My cousin Heather Macintosh arrived with six other family members and we had a mini MacKinnon family reunion on Ananda. Heather (nee MacKinnon) & her husband Evan (all my fellow BlackBerry addicts will be interested to know he works for RIM—I tried to hide my iPhone from him but he saw it, so I showed him that I had a BlackBerry too J); their son Kyle and his girlfriend Candice; my cousin Brian MacKinnon; his wife Patsy and their daughter Laura.
It was great to catch up with everyone and to share some memories about our parents and how our lives had intersected over the years through the events in their (and our) family lives that brought us together. My dad and his brother Alex were a lot alike in some ways and yet ended up leading very different lives. Both of them were quiet and thoughtful and while my dad went on to become a Presbyterian minister and lived in several parts of Canada, my uncle Alex stayed on the MacKinnon family farm and raised his family in the same house that dad and Alex were raised in. I can remember going to the farm as a small kid and being so fascinated by all the wonderful things that were there.
As a “townie” all I knew about milk was that it came from a glass bottle that was kept in the fridge. I remember my uncle Alex showing me how a cow was milked and I thought the cow was peeing in the pail! City slickers, what can you do with them, eh?
Its very interesting how gender dynamics work. When we left the marina people were spread all over the boat but by the time we had turned Ananda around and headed back to the marina, the men had all gravitated to the stern and the women were all up on the bow. This seems to happen every time there is a group of people on board. I’ve concluded that the men like to be where there are wheels and levers to play with while the women are simply content to stay forward have us out of their way for a while.
It was great to be able to get together for a visit. Too many times over the past several years the catalyst for seeing each other has been a funeral of a loved one. I was glad that we were able to connect and wear lifejackets instead of suits!
