You can always go home

This past weekend I had two--not just one--but two family reunions to attend. It had been one tough week at our house (more on that later, maybe, but I prefer to live in the land of the light and mundane rather than the dark and dramatic) and by Friday afternoon I wasn't feeling up to anything more than curling up in bed and turning the world away for a few days.

But duty to family will drag one to do just about anything, so we left a kitchen full of dirty dishes, hopped in the dirty mini-van--completely ill prepared for two days of camping--and just drove.

I'm glad I did.

We stopped at my dad(deceased for 20 years, but the product of a very big and connected family of almost 250)'s family reunion first, on the way to my husband's immediate family reunion out by Moon Lake. As I made the rounds to say hello to my favorite incarnations of what I remember about my dad, I found myself buoyed up by the enthusiastic hugs and genuine pleasure they expressed over our arrival. Aunt Charm hugged me so hard I cracked, and as her (for whatever reason unusually intense) hug lingered my usually stoic resolve disintegrated and I teared up. I needed that hug. I realized I needed this family.

Later that night I began with Uncle Steve what I thought would be the usual light banter reserved for most people, especially those you might see only once a year. Soon I found him mentioning a positive personality trait he has noticed in me and frankly telling me in a beautiful way what my dad would have had to say about it. The tears welled up again and as I held them back--along with all the rather intense thoughts and emotions behind them--I saw the same struggle reflected back at me. We no longer needed words. In that moment--and since--I felt connected across the ages and beyond mortality to something I usually stay too busy and too distanced to contemplate.

These are my people. They love me not for who I am, what I know or what I do, but simply because I was born to them. To love and be loved like that is pure and beyond compare. And that, is the beauty of family.