Identical Cousins

As great as it is to have all our kids at the cottage, there is something wonderful about smaller, more intimate visits as well. Jonna and Melissa drove up on Friday (August 16) and spent the weekend with Ken and me. Highlights:

Dinner at the Bluffs. Note that Melissa did not stop squeezing lime into her Corona for the snapshot. We have our priorities, after all.

The girls took a nice long kayak ride, tracking their performance with an app on their iPhones.

Rock-hounding at Schneiders

This was the first time Melissa and Jonna had ever been to John and Sharon's place. John and Sharon weren't there, but with their permission we had a lovely time collecting rocks along the shoreline.

We felt especially honored to be on the beach today, because it was the anniversary of Jessica Schneider's death. I walked up the beach and sat for a while in quiet, meditating on the sacredness of this place and how lucky I felt to be there with my two girls.

Melissa found the most amazing stone of the day (perhaps of the summer!): half quartz, half basalt. She collected a number of fossils for sons Harrison and Lennon, and one way or the other ended up with a number of stones that looked like a bit like turds. She really knows how to please her boys.

Hijinks at Pier 33

Jonna and Melissa are first cousins, born three days apart in 1975. They have so many inside jokes it's sometimes hard to keep up. Often we just sit and listen to them laugh, tease each other, and comment on the foibles of others. They are masters of the coined phrase, and have many pet names for each other. I introduced them to the concept of "identical cousins," from the old Patty Duke show. They took to it immediately and used it as an excuse for all manner of silly/similar tastes, preferences, and behaviors. Listening to them order food at a restaurant--finishing each others' sentences and speaking in unison--is both funny and alarming.

"Still they're cousins....identical cousins, and you'll find, they laugh alike, they walk alike, at times they even talk alike...you could lose your mind, when cousins....are two of a kind!"