Five years ago. It is almost hard to believe it has been that long.

Peggy was in the beginning stages of dealing with her mother’s Alzheimer’s disease, and I knew it was going to be a tough summer. I decided to rent a place at Lake Travis for the entire summer so that we could go anytime we wanted to and relax. Man, did we need it and did we use it.

We joined a boat club where you pay so much each month and you get to choose from whatever boats they have available at the time. Since we really didn’t care what kind of boat we got it was a fantastic arrangement for us. Most of the time we got pontoon boats, even though it was just the two of us. It was perfect for us. We would find a spot in the lake to anchor and just lay there or swim until we felt like moving to another spot.

If Peggy wasn’t in Dallas with her mother we were there on the weekends. I was working on a special project in Austin for my company, so we were there on a lot of weekdays, too. We finished each day in the pool and then sitting on the back deck watching the sunset.

We took a million pictures that summer, but one in particular popped up today and it is one of our favorite memories from the summer. It wasn’t Peggy in a bathing suit (though those were several of my favorite memories) on the boat; it was us on the back porch one night after dark. We would sit out there having a drink and smoking a cigar and talking about all of the things that were happening in our lives. Every night Peggy would request to take a picture while we sat out on the porch, and every night I would tell her it is too dark for a picture. Finally, one night after we had spent all day on the boat, finished it off in the pool and were back home with a drink enjoying the back porch, I agreed to let her try.

We have laughed about that night ever since. Understand, at the lake after dark it is dark. To take a picture you need to use the flash. When you are in the dark and your eyes see a flash, what do they do? That’s right, they close.

The more pictures we took and the harder we tried to keep our eyes open, the funnier it got. If the neighbors had been outside I am sure we would have irritated them. But we still laugh about those terrible pictures. And that beautiful, awful, wonderful, terrible summer.

We finally got one picture where we both kept our eyes almost open and without too pained an expression on our faces. That picture was among the ones that popped up today as a “five years ago today”. There were awesome pictures of my gorgeous wife in her bikini on the boat, but this is the one that prompted me to write tonight:

I started laughing again as soon as I saw it. And I just laughed when I attached it.

Sometimes you just have to do the silly stuff. It helps with all the other real stuff.