The Relay for Life was last night. I had high hopes for it being a significant event, but it just wasn't. Not because of some emotional fire that went unlit or anything; we were rained out two hours after it started. Clouds were gathering during the whole opening ceremony, and by 9:00 the organizers announced that the storm contingency plan of moving everyone to the far end of the high school parking lot and into the Ice Arena was being put into effect. Given the choice between doing that and taking the chance of beating the storm home, most of our team went with option B. Kind of disappointing because the amount of rain that came made the luminary paper bag torches unusable before they were even lit, and because (for me) there were several people there for our team that I frankly don't get to see very often, and only saw for an abbreviated amount of time instead of the hours I was hoping for. So there were elements to it all that were disappointing.
But that isn't to say there weren't highlights. And most of them involved my nephews.
--Nephew #1 brought his two best friends along for the night, which is always fun. The two friends are both awesome kids, and it just makes me smile to think that Nephew #1 has these guys at his side while they navigate their high school years. Plus the three of them are entertaining to be around. One of our cousins brought her son along, another good kid a year older than my nephew. He fell in step with the other guys like they'd all grown up in the same neighborhood, which was great to see. Nobody wants to be the outsider. The group of them even got into a minor bidding war at the silent auction tent over a 25 lb. Pearson's Salted Nut Roll. And, unless I'm mistaken, because of the way so many people bugged out as the storm was coming, I think one of those four boys may have actually won all 53,800 calories of that thing.
--Nephew #2 is, in my opinion at least, the most sensitive of the three of them. He was pretty psyched for the relay, and the excitement was already cranking up pretty good back at Grandma and Grandpa's house before we all left because it was the first time the boys got to meet the new puppies. While #2 and #3 were playing with the puppies in the front yard, there was a moment when #2 just kind of bounced up to his feet and bounced up to my dad with a hug and an "I love you, Grandpa," out of nowhere. Followed with another quick bounce and an "I love you, Grandma" just to make sure she didn't think he was playing favorites. I know how much this meant to them. I love this kid just because he's the one who will do things like this without hesitation. When the relay started and he and I were walking to the track, we walked past my parents, already on the track and starting their first lap, holding hands and my mother's eyes full of tears, missing the hell out of her daughter and trying to understand how she could already be dead for five years.
"Grandma looks sad," #2 said.
"Yeah, she is," I told him. "She misses Dop."
"I do too," he said.
"Then go give Grandma a hug," I said. "She needs it right now."
I choked up while I said this because I just remembered saying the same thing five years earlier to #1 just before my sister's funeral was about to begin. So #2 takes off running to catch up like he's on a mission, and he caught up to them and gave her a hug, and she held on to him tight.
After #2 took off, Nephew #3 saw him running and asked where he was going, because those two have kind of a symbiotic monkey-see monkey-do relationship. When I told him, he took off right behind him to offer up his own hugs. Nephew #3 has been a rather spirited child for, well, his whole life, but during the past year he's been growing up a lot, and he's actually responsible for my favorite part of the whole relay event this year. I took in some early laps with #2 and #3. As we were looking for luminaries our family had made, we noticed that several of them had blown over in the wind that would be carrying in the storm later that evening. I stopped a couple of times to set them back up so the names were visible, and after seeing me do this #3 started running ahead a little whenever he saw one that needed fixing. I coached him on how to get the sand spread out on the bottom so it would be more stable, and after that he designated himself the Luminary Straightener. He probably reset at least 20 more by the time we finished the lap and met up with some people on our team. To see this little guy doing something like this, demonstrating how much he has grown past the selfishness that too often defines younger kids, just warmed my heart.
Overall the event was disappointing because I just didn't get enough time there to really feel like I had gotten in the emotion and reflection that the relay usually brings on. But it certainly had its moments.
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