SINKING FEELING

I have been to basic training and family reunions and I prefer the former over the latter. This summer, I attended the worst kind of family reunion, specifically, the dreaded in-law family reunion.

I have always lived by the motto, “There is no problem so big that you can’t run away from it,” but my wife applied overwhelming spousal pressure and I was on my way to a weekend of chatting up goiter conditions with her Aunt Edna.

We converged at Farragut State Park, with 184 campsites scattered on 4,000 acres along beautiful Lake Pend Oreille and well known as a destination for big events, like basic training for sailors in World War II, World Scout Jamborees and family reunions.

Anyone who has attended an in-law reunion knows that the goal is to satisfy your spouse that you have conducted yourself properly at this premier family event without announcing your nutty political views or revealing any outstanding warrants.

But hers is no ordinary family. My wife has countess siblings and I would need a player scorecard to keep track of them.

My wife, herself, is one-half of identical twins and her mother managed to deliver yet another set of twins and assorted singles during her childbearing years.

All of my wife’s siblings have spouses with whom they have birthed a brood of faces to which I still have not attached names. Then there are the aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces and great-grandchildren – and they have names, too, I think.

At these family gatherings, I gravitate toward the few members of my wife’s family who have not spoken to my face about the disappointment of their sister/daughter/niece marrying a guy like me.

These people are usually the no-food-just-beer-in-the-ice-chest campers and they routinely have a flask not so well hidden in their light summer garb in case they get lost in the woods. They include the freshly divorced uncle who showed up with “that hat check girl.”

True to form, this family subset wasted little time in gathering near the above-mentioned foodless ice chests and commencing in some serious bonding.

The more respectable relatives built campfires in the large metal rims forged by the state park blacksmiths.

The reunion hummed right along through the afternoon, with various relatives playing games, swimming and who knows what else.

Any hitches in activities were willed into submission by the family patriarch, my father-in-law, whose checkered past includes being a former U.S. Marine, former county prosecutor and proud Irish Catholic. He never fails to use at least one swear word when speaking of the English and when he says grace over dinner, he never forgets to thank God for keeping Oliver Cromwell suffering in the deepest bowels of hell.

Strangely, I get along with the crusty old codger. My wife attributes our appreciation of each other to the “A-factor.” I can’t go into more detail in a family newspaper.

As the sun began to set on Buttonhook Bay, I felt the lonesome if not primal urge to seek out my wife, whom I had not seen since seven or eight beers ago.

I spotted her in the distance, wrapped in a beach towel and looking mighty attractive as she stood warming around a campfire with the rest of her wet relatives.

Silently, I slipped up behind her, leaned over her shoulder and nuzzled through her wet hair with my nose until I reached her right ear into which I whispered a suggestion that might be classified anywhere from “a romantic overture” to something much more explicit, depending on your sensibilities and alcohol consumption.

After I withdrew my face from her wet hair, my eye was caught by another woman standing nearby wrapped in another beach towel. This other woman was also my wife.

I gazed past the fireside group, out toward the Bitterroot Mountains and the broad blue expanse of beautiful Lake Pend Oreille.

I saw a ship in the distance. It was sinking. It was mine.