8:28 PM. Friday. Trel loaded the suv like I'd done it a hundred times before, except this time every bag felt heavier than it should've.
Family vacation. Everybody in — pops, brothers, sisters- in- laws, the kids nephews and nieces all of that.
A cabin on the water at one of the states campground, the kind of place where the Wi-Fi comes and goes and the truth catches up to you whether you invited it or not.
The drive out was quiet at first, just tires on backroad asphalt and the kids half-asleep in the back seat, dreaming about lake water before we even got there.
Trel kept my eyes on the road and my mind somewhere else entirely somewhere three exits past where we were headed, in a conversation I hadn't had yet with myself.
We pulled up and the cabin lights were already on, porch glowing with different color bulbs against the treeline like something out of an old photograph.
And when we stepped out that suv, it was like no time had passed at all. Arms open.
Laughing before anybody even said a word. Just like old times.
We settled in.
Coolers were open and somebody had the speaker going low in the background, grown folks talking shit and laughing so loud the neighbor the next campsite can hear them.
Then Trel decided to take the kids for a walk.
Down by the water, where the dock creaks under bare feet and the moon's light shining over the water leaving a light bulb glow across the lake.
Their eyes were wide pointing at an alligator floating by with that dinner look in its eyes.
One the kids asked if we could stay here forever and if this was our new house now.
He told them I wish, but it's just for the weekend.
But watching them run that shoreline without a care in the world that did something to me. It opened up something he had been keeping shut for a long minute.
Because the truth is, I didn't just come here to unwind. He came here to think. Really think.
About whether the life he was building is the one he actually want whether "family and a real relationship" is something he was still choosing, or something he was going was to just let still go on with the stupidity and guilt with all the he say and she say that could bring a whole lot of nonsense to his situation from people that shouldn’t be speaking or listening to in the first place when kids are involved.
Everybody around that fire tonight thinks he’s good. Relaxed.
And he is, in the way a man can be present and still be somewhere else at the same time.
He’s here for the vacation. He’s here for my kids' laugh echoing off water at 9 PM on a Friday.
But he’s also there for him to come to face with the question he’s been dodging in the daylight hours back home:
Do I want this if so no more one foot out the door?
Or is it time to be honest that some things get built out of love and some things just get built out of not knowing how to stop?
I don't have the answer yet. Maybe I won't have it by Sunday when we load back up and head home.
But Trel knows that this weekend's not just about the lake, or the cabin, or the drinks with people he love.
It's about clearing enough smoke out his head to finally see what's actually standing in front of him and deciding, for real this time, whether he should be in that picture or step out of the frame.
For now, the kids are running the shoreline barefoot, laughing at nothing, and the fire's still going back at the cabin. He got a few days to figure it out.
Trel intend to use every hour.
To be continued…