Reeling into the driveway of my cousin's lake house I was glad to see that the place I had spent so many hours of my precious childhood remained unchanged. The usual supple winds of the nearby water lead me to the ugly copper siding of a home which I loved so dearly. Approaching the door, I paused to make the sure that the step my uncle had assured he would repair would still sing me its crooked melody. Everything about this home was perfectly normal, but as I would soon come to realize, looks are often misleading.

My uncle's large Italian hands greeted me at the door, but his usual spectacle was non-existent. An emptiness accompanied his half-hearted smile, and a coldness filled the bones of the man who seemed to warm everyone's heart. Shrugging off what I thought to be the effects of a bad day, I tore off my slippers and quickly ran off to greet the rest of my family. Just as soon as I had thought this myriad of welcoming would end, my aunt appeared with a stylish new "hair-do" and brightened the sullen mood of the room. Unimpressed, my uncle turned away, and continued his work at the stove. With my adolescent right to not care, I decided a nice batch of pancakes was a worthy distraction.

The rest of our day in no way paralleled its strange beginning. A beautiful sunshine accompanied us as we kayaked across the secluded lake. Silence and tranquility roared across the calm current, while an innocent buck paraded across the scenic landscape, mocking three inexperienced sailors who meant it no harm. Despite the perfect setting, I was distracted by a change in my cousin Michael. A top student in his class, Michael always made sure he had a lot to say and could not refrain from sharing his newest discovery, a day where Michael eluded his normal behavior was unknown by me until now. I concluded that a bad day could not possibly be contagious enough to stiffen his boisterous personality. As I was about to ask if there was "Anything wrong?" , the high pitched call of my younger cousin interrupted my over-analytical thought process.

Aunt Kally rolled the die and was finally able to declare herself champion of a very long game of Monopoly. Conquering a series of undecipherable cold stares from my Uncle, she grabbed one more hotel and monopolized the boardwalk empire. The couple who had married at the young age of nineteen had me stumped, and I could not understand why a common hostility seemed to be the only connection between the two. As I looked closer throughout the course of our traditional board game I was forced to slip farther away from my childish interpretation of a bad day, and slowly pushed to the realization of what I had half expected this whole time. My siblings and I went off to bed while my parents, aunt, and uncle sipped down countless cups of coffee. They talked for a while, and by the time the scent of a fresh cup of coffee had come and gone several times, I was able to see that, unlike our game of Monopoly, this meeting was not your traditional "breaking of the bread".

We left the next morning, and any plans I had made to make better use of our weekend vacation were out the window. With a strange eagerness to leave, my parents ushered us out the door, using every excuse they could think of to convince me that we had to go. It wasn't until we were half way home did a strange exchange of lines between my parents push me to ask the question;

"What, are they (my aunt and uncle) getting a divorce?"

After an awkward and especially quiet silence, my parents validated my fear and began to analyze a situation that began to seem so horrible in my head.

Some people really suck. I had always been convinced that my aunt and uncle were the ideal example of what a couple should be like, and I could not comprehend why two people could despise each other so much as to break a family apart. It is now so strange for me when I reflect upon that weekend I spent enjoying the company of a broken family. I felt it was a completely unnecessary way for them to explain what was going on in their lives, and this sudden change showered a light upon the inevitability of some of life's situations, and I learned to appreciate my family more because of it. Although this memory makes me feel uneasy every time I reflect upon it, the bizarre experience was an eye opener, and although my parents are the only ones out of twelve couples not to have been divorced, I understand there are often many more "pieces to the puzzle" than that meet the eye.-much like my ugly weekend in a beautiful wood.