Not Without You

In January (after the all-important Lord of the Rings marathon), we went with Mahon and Cindy Lynn to Great Wolf Lodge, an indoor waterpark in Charlotte.  When we arrived we all hurried into our swimsuits and went right away to ride the big waterslides.  For some reason (no longer remembered), I needed to run back to our room and so I told Russ & the girls that I would rejoin them after their next ride. 

I had anticipated that I could make it to the room and back just in time to catch up with them as they came off of the slide.  I have no idea whether or not that was actually true, because what I had not anticipated was that due to the visual homogeneity caused by my nearsightedness I would not actually be able to find them again—all I could see was flesh colored blobs in bathing suits.

I watched at the bottom of one slide for a while, then panicked and decided that I must have missed them and went to watch at the bottom of another slide.  After watching there for a while I irresolutely walked to another place to look up the stairs, then back to the bottom of the first slide.

I was not unaware of the irony of the situation—there I was in a fun place, not having any fun at all.  It reminded me of my freshman year in high school when I’d gone on a band trip before I had any good friends in the band.  After playing in a competition we had an entire day to spend at a local amusement park—where I was distressed to learn how unfun a fun place could be without someone to enjoy it with.  I thought of that day in the amusement park as I squinted at each tube of swimmers coming down the water slides, wondering where my family was.  I had no desire to go off on my own, knew that the only fun for me that day was in having this experience with my family.  Over and over in my mind I heard the words, “not without you…”  And when they finally came spinning out of the tunnel, my heart lightened immediately and instantly the day was happy again.

 

In the months since that day in Great Wolf Lodge I’ve had the opportunity to learn the truth of those words in a deeper way.  Living for 3 months in North Carolina without Russ, traveling with only the little kids, being away from Josh for so long, all of those things have shown me more deeply how important our family is.  There have been many times since we arrived in Oregon that the memory of that moment has come back into my mind.  I think it’s a good thing that I have a recurring reminder that the best place in the world isn’t happy enough without my whole family, and that as long as we are together we can be happy anywhere.