The garage, the grandmother and holidays

It's a long weekend here.

Monday is Labour Day.

Or the long weekend straight after Anzac Day that you never quite take enough advantage of. 

I remember as a kid wishing that the public holidays were more spaced out.

It's caught us unaware, to be frank, although what a welcome little bonus it is.

Double bonus is that we are child free tonight. Lush!

I have been dabbling a little in family history of late, with regular visits to my parents and contact with a - well, her father and my mother were cousins, so that would make me - what, third cousins?

In the exchange of new information from both sides, understanding of what has happened in the past makes you realise that documenting of things tell the stories that make history.

I have, through my own hoarding through the phases of my life, plastic boxes of writing and paperwork and filing and photos and projects that I am going to get around to one day.

When I have nothing better to do. Long weekend possibilities.

I have learned many things this week, including something that would have devastated - or delighted - my grandmother, revisited another family secret that has so many layers. 

I have also remet through my third cousin one Christmas of my childhood.

The Sunshine Coast in the Seventies was an event for us, and a week at Christmas very much anticipated.

School holidays were impossibly long, with 2 months of nothing to do (if you were a City Mouse) - or first needles, Christmas, branding, school shopping, covering books and naming clothes if you came from the bush.

So Christmas at the Sunshine Coast in the Seventies was a spectacular highlight of my childhood.

I do recall - correctly or otherwise - we were inadequately catered to carwise for the trip, having a sedan and three kids going away for a week at Christmas.

Add to that Summertime heat, pre-air-conditioning, gravel roads, roadworks...

These days, this trip would take quite a comfortable maybe half-day with stops? Then? It felt like weeks.

Again, I might need to check Dad's diary but I do believe that that particular road trip that day was that sedan's last - and our saviours that day were my mother's cousin and his family.

See, we knew that we were going to meet them that holidays - but not like this.

We had imagined well thought out outfits and good rest prior - as, no doubt did my parents - not hot, sweaty, untangling our legs from detritus and overcoming car sickness.

Looking back through the lens of time, my mother's cousin's wife - my third cousin's mother - was probably pretty upset that her quiet evening at home with her own little family before the craziness of hosting a huge family Christmas - especially when the crazy family mainly belongs to your crazy husband's side - was rudely interrupted by the influx of an additional two adults and three children around your dinner table.

They had a trampoline. There were boy cousins my age! I didn't know cousins came in boy! We didn't have that many cousins at that point and my age and above were all girls.

My third cousin was the oldest of the whole generation. She had long hair and was a proper teenager. We were in awe.

This was the Christmas of the tree.

Several days - and swims and adventures involving shops and/or ice cream and/or cars and/or tyres and/or feasts - later, we went to their place for the Christmas feast.

I remember someone got a slot cars game. I remember that the pool table was converted to being a dining table as there were so many there.

But I mainly remember the four cousins. Or four third cousins.

The sophisticated teenager. The 2 boys. And the to die-for cute toddler who wanted to be with us all. 

So yes, ready for the long weekend. 

In between the mowing and the reclaiming daughter from being a modern teenager. And cooking.