My sister/sister-in-law weekend is a time-honored tradition for many years. We’ve been getting together for a weekend in Michigan two weeks after Labor Day since 1998. The first year we rented a smaller house (considering there are twelve of us). The house was old in that moldy carpet, bad kitchen, and yellow-tile-in-the bathroom-that’s-supposed-to-be-white kind of way. Not old in the 1920s vintage, restored, charming farmhouse kind of way. We rented it from pictures, so we really didn’t know what we were getting into. Those pictures should win some sort of award for purposeful deception. And as a bonus, the creepy, moldy house also came with a creepy guy that lived in the basement. But the basement didn’t appear to be a basement from the outside of the house. It looked more like a cellar, with no real windows. So, we had a bunch of women and one baby (babies under one year old are allowed to attend – the older ones are too much work) in a moldy house with a mole man living under it. Great set-up for a horror film.

We tried to make the best of it, and managed to have an enjoyable weekend. The owner of the house had told us that we didn’t need to be out until 4pm Sunday, although the contract said noon. So, on Sunday, most of us went to the outlet mall in Michigan City to get some early Christmas shopping or late back-to-school shopping done. My sister Debbie stayed back with my sister-in-law Jeanne because Jeanne’s baby (Dillon, who is now 19) needed to nap, and no sister is left behind alone – especially with mole man. A little before noon, the homeowner came back to the house and yelled at Debbie that they needed to get out of the house by noon (despite telling us four the day before) because her husband was coming to the house and wanted to watch football. So, Debbie and Jeanne had to pack up the belongings for about eight women, which were scattered around the house, wake up a sleeping baby, and scurry into the front yard to wait for the return of everyone else. Oh, and they didn’t have a car, because we took the cars to the mall. And this was before any of us had cell phones, so there was no way to notify us of the home-owners bipolar meltdown.

And so, there they sat on suitcases in the front yard, as the owner and her husband watched football in the house. Imagine our surprise as we pull up to the rental house with Debbie and Jeanne looking like homeless evictees, holding a crying baby, sitting on suitcases, surrounded by our luggage. Maybe they were crying too, I don’t remember. Of course, we never rented that house again. We found a slightly less moldy, bigger place that is right on Lake Michigan. It’s still old, and not charming, but it seems mostly clean, and there is nobody living in the basement, since there is no basemen. We are still renting that house all these years later. And we laughed this year about that nasty house. We can laugh because we all survived. And I’m glad that we didn’t give up on the girl’s weekend. It would have been easy to give up after that kind of experience. Although not everyone can make it every year, sister/sister-in-law weekend is one of my favorite things about a family that is full of favorite things. From humble beginnings…