Family is Forever

Yesterday I hosted a birthday party for three of my favorite people: my 3-year-old niece, my dad, and my dad's sister. The Aries have the rest of us outnumbered in my family. It started as an idea for a small get-together to acknowledge my dad and niece's back-to-back birthdays, and grew into a big family and friends-who-feel-like-family gathering. There were family friends that I hadn't seen in years who came, and my amazing, artistic aunt, who I hadn't seen in over five years, who is celebrating her birthday today (Happy birthday, Aunt Nancy!).

There's been plenty of family drama and the usual life trials in my family over the years, and many of us have drifted apart, but yesterday none of that showed. Hatchets were buried, bonds were renewed, and best of all, my girls got to be there to see it all. It's an amazing thing, to fill your house up with everyone you love and just bask in it for a whole day. We ate, we talked, the kids played, the musicians jammed, the kids danced, and the party lasted all day long. We're all talking about doing it again, soon.

Probably the only thing I still struggle with about separating from my husband is the guilt over not being able to keep my daughters' family intact. I know what it's like to have divorced parents, the schlepping back and forth with suitcases in hand and wanting desperately to wear the shirt you left at your dad's house and won't see again for at least a week. But watching my girls run circles around their extended family yesterday, giggling and twirling in their princess dresses, and having them ask over and over if we can do it all again next weekend, I'm letting some of the guilt go. They are loved, and they have an intact family, just as I do. My parents divorced over 30 years ago, and had plenty of years of not speaking kindly of one another, but yesterday I got to sit between them and listen as my father played his banjo and my mother sang along. That's the thing about family. They're forever, if you let them be.

Home Again, Home Again

The week in Hawaii was great. We had torrential downpours for the first two days, which was less than ideal, but we made the best of it (hot tubbing in the rain is a nice way to pass the time—even the kids loved it), and we were repaid for our positive outlooks with nice weather for the rest of the trip.

The kids, of course, loved the pools and hot tubs at the condo complex where we were staying, and the beach, as always, was a big hit. My father is a long-time train aficionado, and he found a 40-minute train ride through an old plantation. Half-way through the ride, the train stops next to an enclosure of Hawaiian boars. Initially they captured four of the wild pigs, but now there are 50, just a few short years later. Who knew pigs bred like rabbits? They handed out cups of dog food for us to feed the pigs, and Peanut thought that was the most fun she’d ever had. String Bean wasn’t so sure. The pigs were noisy, squealing and butting each other aside to get to the food we threw in handfuls over the fence, and the ground was a muddy mess from the heavy rains, so the scrambling pigs splashed all of us with mud. Peanut found all of this to be hysterically funny and exciting, even as we wiped her down in the bathroom afterward, laughing and saying “Look, pig mud!” at the splatter we wiped from her legs.

It was great to spend a full week with my father, extending beyond the initial catch-up phase and into a comfortable zone of just hanging out and relaxing together. And it was terrific to spend a week with my sister and her 7-month-old daughter, two people I never quite get to see enough of anymore. The girls loved having their cousin around so much, and I can see String Bean’s future as a great babysitter, from her attentive care of her little cousin.

It was hard to leave, which is the way you want to end any vacation. I realized that in her 4 years, String Bean has been to Oahu, The Big Island, and now Kauai. So, Maui must be next.