Seasons and families

I was driving home today from Grammy Doris' house, and just about the time I was about to drive under an old railroad bridge framed with beautiful trees filled with autumn leaves, I started debating which season is my favorite. Actually, it started off with a genuine appreciation for autumn. This morning as I left the house for church the temperature was in the 30s and for the first time since last winter I pulled out my worn gray fleece and a scarf and bundled up before I headed out the door. By this afternoon the sun was shining brightly above and the day warmed up to about 60° or so. I've decided that autumn is such a season of promise. It welcomes in chilly mornings and evenings, and apple cider and stews and warm blankets. The promise of winter is on the horizon... soon it will be cold all day long and snow will dust the mountains and icicles will grow on bare tree limbs outside my bedroom window. But for right now, it's like that pause of inhalation before you jump off of a rockface into a lake below... expectation, anticipation, fullness of life. So I was fully appreciating autumn and all that it brings, but then my mind swung back to summer. When I think of summer I think of suntan lotion, swimming in freshwater lakes, food fresh off the grill, and fireflies. Then of course there is spring, when all the trees and flowers and bushes bloom and there is such a brilliance of color and scent and new life. Even the air feels fresh in springtime. And winter has it's own solemn beauty... ice and the purity of unblemished white snow and icicles and frosty breath in the air. I decided that I just couldn't decide between all of them, and I was just thankful to God that I live in a place where I get to experience the joys of all four seasons now. Florida has two seasons-- summer and February-- as we like to put it.

I was also contemplating family on the drive home. It's not a very long drive, so after that long soliloqy I just wrote you about seasons I'm not sure how I managed to get all this thinking in between there and here. I love the family I was born into. On my mother's side my grandparents were as opposite as could be-- an American G.I. and a British war bride. From my Nana I learned the importance of a thank-you note and good posture, and my grandfather was as steady and loyal as they come. I wish that I could have visited England before my Nana passed away, because I have so many questions that I would ask her now that I have visited her homeland. I don't think she ever stopped pining for it. I think that she passed along to me her love for nature and parks and flowers. She loved beauty, and so do I.

On my dad's side I have grandparents originally from New Jersey whose parents were full-blooded Italians and Puerto Ricans. Although it is not strong, there is still that delightful flavor of that northern immigrant culture that permeates our family. It's in the way my grandmother talks, and in the way my grandfather uses his hands. It's the stories about how my grandfather skipped school to go to New York and play in the pool halls there. It's the recipes that my grandmother learned from her Italian mother, the way we all sit around the table after dinner and rehash the same familiar stories and laugh at all the same parts.

Yet, I also feel as if I have been a part of several different families in my 23 years. They are each unique in their own right, but truly no less special than my own biological family.

In my young years in Kentucky I had a family with four girls: Amanda, Ashleigh, Candi and Nikki. We were in the same class at school, were cheerleaders together, walked home from school together, had slumber parties together, played together, did homework together, had crushes on the same boys together, daydreamed about the future together. Candi and I would walk to her house after school through the Kentucky bluegrass and swim in her pool. So often I would ride my bicycle over to Nikki's house and we would play outside until it got dark and I had to go home. Or we would walk from her house with her big bulky video camera and make endless home videos of us dancing around my bedroom. Those were the days when the only things I had to do after going to school was a piddly amount of homework and my main goal was to PLAY.

I also had another non-biological family at that time in Kentucky with my next door neighbors, the Brands. Together we planted and tended a huge vegetable garden that sat behind our house and reaped the benefits together. Lettuce, radishes, broccoli, carrots, corn... we'd go out to pick vegetables to go with our dinner and we'd all eat together as one big family. Aaron was a year younger than me and Jordan about three years younger, and we were practically inseparable. We tore all over town on our bicycles, peeping into people's windows and playing on the railroad tracks when we weren't supposed to. We also made home videos that should forever be locked away if any of us hope to marry. We watched TV together, ate together, spent our snow days together. Our dad's went to seminary together, our mom's worked across the street from one another, and Aaron and Jordan and I pretended like we ruled the neighborhood (which really only consisted of Brenda Mason and some punk kid named J.T. who wouldn't let Jordan and I up into his treehouse because we were girls).

My high school class became another family to me. There were only 30 or so of us, and we mainly all hung out together, helped each other pass our classes, and were totally into one another's business all the time. I was a cheerleader and I remember distinctly my senior year when it was the guys from my class that became the starters on the basketball team. They had been playing together for over five years at this point, and watching them play was like watching water flow over a rock. I knew by heart the fluid motion of their passes; I knew their pace and rhythm for playing to win; and I knew the feeling when my heart would leap to my throat as one of them shot the ball in a perfect three-point arc right as the buzzer would sound. I knew that Tommy would never miss a free-throw; that Rodney and Philip were good as long as you could get them to drive up the key for a lay-up; and that if TJ was on his game, he could go for a nice streak of threes before being disturbed by anyone. We decorated lockers with signs and candy, and we went to Beef's to celebrate wins and sometimes even after losses. They were my brothers and my boyfriends. Outside the basketball court we grew up together. We dated, we broke each other's hearts, we gossiped, and we were there for each other when we needed it.

In college I had another family. It was born out of a summer spent living in a hotel together in Fort Lauderdale, FL, and it grew as we became roommates, confidants, and comrades in spiritual battle. It was within this family that secrets were shared, dreams were hatched, and love and loyalty were unabashedly present. This family has laughed together and cried together and prayed together and worshiped together... this family truly knew what community was.

Along the way I've also had many sisters... Rebecca, Bethany, Julia, Kristie... the women I have lived with... and cooked with and danced with and cried with and peed my pants with laughter with.

And now, during days like today, I feel like I'm coming to be a part of a new family here in Asheville, and it makes me happy.

I am so incredibly blessed. Do you see all that? A wonderful biological family, and years of memories with my other "families" that have been created throughout my short 23-year-old life. It makes me praise God with my whole heart!