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.
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.
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