Together

I’m trying desperately to remember the last time it happened, and I admit I just can’t quite put my finger on it. But Saturday, we loaded into the van— every single stateside family member— and took a day trip.

I honestly didn’t expect the older kids to come. There are work schedules and outside commitments and, to be honest, the not insignificant reality that even a ten passenger van is not exactly roomy once all the people being piled into the rows are no longer under 5 feet tall. On Friday though, when I relayed our plans, though, they surprised me, one by one. We were taking a two hour drive into the NC mountains to meet up with my-inlaws at an outdoor spot. It had been nearly a year since some of them had seen their grandparents. They wanted to come.

So Saturday morning, we piled into the van with extra layers of clothes for cold weather exploring and a grocery aisle worth of snacks. Because I suffer from amaxophobia (the fear of being a passenger in a vehicle I’m not driving), I was the pilot. Christopher rode shotgun, and all three back rows were filled with bodies of various sizes. And off we went, two hours east, to meet up with family.

It was a lovely day. A perfect day for being outside in December, really. The air was crisp, reminding you of the season as you strolled amongst the bare trees and admired those still wrapped in green. The pops of color, like the ornamental purple cabbages, were stunning in the way that reminds you that so many precious things become more beautiful when the riot of life surrounding them are stripped away. There were very few people other than the ones we had traveled to see, which allowed us time to meander and chat and laugh spend a leisurely lunch watching our crew play hide and seek with their 7 year-old cousin while we adults saw each other without the help of a computer screen.

And we just were. And it felt normal. Real. Right. And like those purple cabbages, even more appreciated because of the backdrop onto which the day was painted: a dry year of few opportunities for interactions, the unexpected gift of more people able to come.

I know there won’t be many of these “all of us” day trips left in my immediate family’s future, and that’s o.k. The natural process of peeling away has been ongoing for a while now, and I accept it with the knowledge that it is healthy and good and will ultimately lead to the new branches in my family tree that I will cherish. But this…

Not just all of us in a van…

My mother-in-law delighting in the fact that John Mark now stands a few inches taller than she does. Jack on a bench near his grandfather, both of them with their long legs stretched out, engrossed in some conversation that is just theirs. Christopher laughing with his sister. A gaggle of little boys (and one sweet little girl) leaning over to catch a glimpse of a sluggish koi swimming in the chilled pond.

Together.

That is the stuff that doesn’t just keep you alive. That, truly, is life.