The Best Birthday Present Ever! A memory I thought was lost
Twenty years ago, when I was the in my early forties and a very busy father of an active and growing family I used to escape twice a year – all alone, except for our Irish Setter, Rusty - for a long fishing weekend to an old cabin on a remote lake about 200 miles away from where we lived.
The cabin belonged to an old college buddy and the lake had some of the best sweet water fishing that Northern Michigan has ever had to offer. The fishing was truly amazing, and I’d come home relaxed, refreshed, and loaded down with enough iced fish to supply our whole extended family and friends. (Those were the days before fishing quotas.)
My wife was not a big fan of solo fishing, so she got away twice a year with a childhood girlfriend for weekends in New York to see the shows and shop. Either her parents or mine would come to visit and help look after our four kids while one or the other of us was “on retreat”.
Our marriage has always been a very strong one, and we both felt very hip and progressive for allowing each other “me time” away from one another. We called them our birthday presents to one another. Those trips probably enhanced our relationship over the years, and we were definitely ahead of our time in social relationships.
This arrangement worked for probably five or six years before other events made it unfeasible to continue, but my wife and I always cherished those weekends away on our own.
After the kids were grown and off doing their own things she and I would exchange wistful reminisces about our getaway trips. The cabin had long since been demolished and replaced by a water park and camp grounds and she had lost touch with her friend who had moved to California. Rusty had passed away some years past, too, and we were happy spending our vacations together visiting our kids.
My wife has a whole album recording many of her New York trips, but I had remembered only once to take along an old Instamatic camera one year and had only a few great snapshots of the lake and cabin…and way too many of anonymous strings of fish.
Yesterday the entire extended family gathered for a barbeque to celebrate my 60th birthday and they presented to me with much fanfare a beautiful oil painting. This oil painting shows me stepping into my old red fishing boat on my special lake…there’s my special cabin one bank…and there’s Rusty on the dock! I couldn’t believe my eyes!
My wife and kids had conspired to put together the old snapshots of the lake and cabin and combined them with digital photos of me in my fishing gear, the boat, and Rusty from a completely different place and time. A really fine artist had then painted a composite oil painting that recreated for me a memory long gone and one I had believed was lost forever.
Of all the birthday presents I have ever received, this oil painting was the best birthday present ever, and one I will cherish always.
I’m not sure how they accomplished it, but if you want to find, you should check out
www.PaintYourLife.com
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