Family Reunions -- Bend, Oregon

I'm starting this post from living room of my family's house in Grand Junction, Colorado. Anna has just woken up (it's well after eleven o'clock) and is preparing herself some boxed pumpkin pancakes for "breakfast".  Mother sweeps dog hair off the floor (the dogs aren't allowed on the wood floor, but the amount of hair that accumulates suggests otherwise). Jaime eats apple slices dipped in almond butter at the marble counter and chews slowly, deliberately next to the essential oil diffuser. 

The house is beginning to smell like cloves, cinnamon and tangerine. 

Anna cooks bacon. Turkey bacon, 'cos the real kind isn't really eaten in this household. 

"Anna, you're drowning out the smell of essential oils," Jaime charges Anna in her incredibly soft spoken way. 

"Yeah?" Anna juts out her chin. "I wanna smell bacon." 

"Well, I wanna smell cloves." 

"Well, I wanna smell BACON." 

...

Guess which sister takes after me?

My old paintings hang on the walls. My first acrylic of a monochromatic landscape is behind me. To my left is a gigantic oil on wood of an Irish castle from Cahir. Tucked away under a kitchen cabinet is my oil toucan vase with a blue glass bottle and plastic orange. 

Mother uses my old camouflage backpack (from my tomboy phase. I had all the phases) to cart around her massage therapy books. 

There are photos of me on the refrigerator doors and above the electric fireplace and on top of wooden cabinets. 

It's bizarre. It's unsettling. I've become so accustomed to looking at walls and seeing photos of other people that looking at a wall and seeing photos of myself as a two-year-old definitely freaks me out. 

These people have witnessed most of my phases. They saw the princess turned tomboy turned soccer maniac turned horse girl turned so shy she nearly turned inside out. They were around when I was so afraid of spiders and snakes hiding in my room that I'd check the whole damn thing before I went to sleep every single night. They were around when I took all my problems to Jesus and didn't bother sorting anything out myself. They were around when I was so afraid of getting lost that I never went anywhere new.

I wonder what they think of me now? 

We returned from our girls only Oregon road trip at around midnight last night. The last week was full of family (most of whom I haven't seen in four years), acro yoga and cooking. 

Girl loves to cook.

We said goodbye to my Aunt Julie on Monday morning. I hadn't seen much of this effervescent lady because the majority of my time in Portland had been spent upside down at the Oregon Convention Center -- and by the time I'd finished being upside down, I was too worn out to hang out. In fact, the exertion gifted me with a raging headache about halfway through each day. I went to the first aid station to ask for an ibuprofen, and the woman said, "Well, I have ibuprofen... but I use peppermint oil for headaches. Would you like some peppermint oil?"

"Just give me the ibuprofen," I growled at the clear-skinned, glowing hippie.

When I told my little sister about getting ibuprofen for my headache, she scowled deeply and said, "I thought this was a hippie place. They should have given you peppermint." 

"They tried to." 

"Oh, okay. Then they really are hippies."

Saying goodbye to family is a little harder than saying goodbye to friends I meet on the road.  Perhaps I feel more guilt. Perhaps I feel like I'm missing out on building a community with blood. Perhaps it's because when I say goodbye to family, I really do feel like, maybe I'll never see these people again.

The friends I meet on the road often live a similar lifestyle. It makes sense that we'll see each other again because we move through life in a way that's bound to intersect eventually. But not many in my biological family move the way I do. 

Which is great. I'm a firm believer in happiness and that everyone should be allowed to make it happen and I understand that most people prefer sleeping in the same bed night after night after night....

But it does tend to make each hug feel like the last.

It took three hours to drive to Bend, but after the trek to Portland, three hours felt like nothing at all.

My goodness, I can't wait to see these people. 

I love my Aunt Pattie and my Uncle Scott. I'm surprised that Aunt Pattie still allows me in the house after how much I embarrassed her right when she started dating Scott, but this makes me love her all the more. 

I was young, so that's an excuse. I was romantic, so that's another. I thought the world revolved around me, and I suppose that's more of a character flaw than an excuse. 

"Awe (I couldn't say my Rs as a child) you my Unckwe (I also couldn't say my Ls) Scott?" I asked Scott. 

"Nope, I'm just Scott," was probably what he said. 

"Wew, I'm gonna caw you Unckwe Scott," I insisted. "Because youwe gonna mawy my Aunt Pattie." 

And then I drew a picture of Uncle Scott and Aunt Pattie getting married. And I triumphantly gave it to my Aunt Pattie's new boyfriend as I clamored onto his lap.

"See?"

My Aunt Pattie has a very big heart indeed.

This is Cody. He's the most precocious, energetic ten-year-old on the planet (and the galaxy, perhaps). When he was younger, he asked my grandparents, "Why do you have pictures of Jesus in your house?" "Because we love him," they answered. Cody waited a moment and then asked, "then why don't you have picture of me?"

Even though Cody weighs next to nothing, basing him is hard. Because he hasn't the faintest idea as to where his legs, arms, head or butt happen to be at any given moment.

Bend is a beautiful city. If I had to pick any one US city in which to spend a year, I would pick Bend -- no question about it. The nature is exquisite, there is kombucha on tap, their pork tacos are to die for, and the yoga community is just the right amount of hopping.

If you randomly throw a stone in Portland, it'll probably ricochet off at least four yoga teachers before it hits the ground (same as in Boulder, Colorado). If you randomly throw a stone in Bend, you might hit one. 

I could make a life here. For a little while.

These are my people.

Meet Tilly, my favorite dog in the whole world round (the part of it that I've visited, at least). She's the funniest, bounciest, most endearing puppy that ever was (my excessive use of superlatives is totally justifiable).

I tried to waltz with both seesters simultaneously. There was a smattering of success.

There was hot tubbing (my destroyed muscles were so, so thankful), risotto making, bacon, bacon, bacon, kombucha and a quick visit to an REI built into an old warehouse with smokestacks.

Uncle Scott and Aunt Pattie invited me to come and live with them for a year. I promised to cook delicious things and practice lots and lots of massage. 

I don't know when I'll be back to Bend, but I'm already looking forward to the day. Whenever it may be. I'm vewy gwad that Unckwe Scott went ahead and mawied Aunt Pattie. 'Cos they made the best family and I can't wait to be a part of it.

We spent two days with my grandparents, Patricia and Aime.

Guess how I ended up with the name of Aimee Patricia?

Guess how long it took me to realize why Grandpa Aime always called me, "little Aimee" all the time?

Too long. 

My grandparents play cards, so that's what we did. I'm not much of a card player (I prefer scrabble or bananagrams), but playing cards is how my grandparents socialize (when they're not in church or helping with food boxes or visiting sick people).

I lost. I always lose. By a margin I'd rather not talk about.

It was especially hard to say goodbye to my grandparents. My dream is to spend the next five years traveling in Central and South America with no money and then head over to Slovenia for a year to write a book about my experience.

Am I going to see them again? 

I hope so. 

"I want you to know that we pray for you every night," my sweet little grandma whispered in my ear as she pulled me in for a hug.  

We decided to conquer the drive home in one day. We left Keno, Oregon at 6:15 and arrived in Grand Junction, Colorado just before midnight.

It was a long and terrifying day. It was a long day because it took about eighteen hours to actually get home and it was a terrifying day because Anna drove the first two hours.

My sister Anna is sixteen years old. She's five feet tall. It doesn't look like she can reach the gas pedal or see over the steering wheel. She slaughtered me at bumper cars in our youth, but I still don't trust her behind the wheel of a vehicle moving 55 miles per hour at night.

I sat in the back and bit my nails and peered ahead into the darkness. As if peering into the darkness would somehow save our lives if something went horribly wrong (as it was bound to. My sister is sixteen years old and five feet tall).

"I felt safer hitching through Croatia with a drunken truck driver who didn't speak English and wouldn't stop hiccuping," I told my little sister between nail bites.

We stopped at the Salt Flats in Utah to relieve our throbbing backsides and stretch our legs.

How did we survive? 

Sometimes I feel like a bumbly giant when I stand next to the girls in my family. Jaime is five foot two. Anna is five foot. I think my mother is five foot four. I have no idea how the hell I got to be five foot six.

Jaime used the break as an opportunity to practice some ballet

We regretfully loaded our aching behinds back into the Toyota and wound our way onto the interstate. 

"Mom," Anna whined, "Jaime's being weird."

"My bottom is sore," Jaime said, very reasonably. "I can't sit on it anymore."

"Well, put your seatbelt on," my mom replied as we sped along the I80. 

I lost my bananas.

The rest of the drive home was uneventful.  Anna didn't drive and we survived.

And now I'm in my parent's home, sick with a bug I must have caught in Oregon.

Perfect timing, Bourget. Just when you need to be totally fit so that you can practice yoga and garden and enjoy the outdoors, you end up catching a sore throat and a runny nose and sneezes that would make the abominable snowman tremble all the way down to his furry toes.

Humbug.