What a weekend.
We went back up to Canada to relax and just be with people. We’ve found this wonderful lodge where the proprietor thinks having parties in the evenings in the great room are what life’s all about. We think so too. Swedes, Germans, Canadians, Americans.
*****
When I returned home, I went through yet another bag of cards and letters from my past.
Cards and letters from all the friends I had when we first got married. Friends from high school and college mostly, all of us newly married and starting to have children.
It brought back those feelings of being a new parent and the combination of joy and stress with it all. It also reminded me of how most of those friendships have dramatically changed. I feel fortunate we are all on good terms and still see each other on occasion.
However, we completely changed our friend groups over the years, orienting toward our school as well as church and a group of people we started exploring new spiritual ideas with.
One consistent throughout was our cards and letters from family for us and for the girls. That’s why we moved back to Spokane, and there was all the evidence. Through thick and thin, our little ragtag family helped raise these kids, and celebrate life’s milestones as they are, together. I felt a renewed gratitude for that.
I’ve resisted and been exhausted by these families at times, mostly due to beliefs, maturity and boundaries. There was the open antagonism of one sibling’s wife. The boundary-crossing with my parents. The far right-wing conversations that have largely ended but were often present. The affairs a few of the siblings had, leaving me to try and pull off multiple family dinners and take care of stranded nephews.
In writing this, I’m reminded of how tiring it all was and dysfunctional at times, some even now. We tried to pull out and create safety in some ways, but much of it hit us hard and had an impact.
Still, they were there in some capacity, especially Jay’s parents. It has improved over the years and new nieces and nephews have arrived, a wedding took place and the dynamic continues to change with that as well as the parents are aging.
Life marches on.
In some of the letters, I felt saddened to see letters from professors and a friend in my dorm discuss the books and tapes I had sent them. At that time, I was highly evangelical and gave out copies of Mere Christianity and Charle’s Colson’s book, Born Again. I sent some kind of tape to my dorm friend and it appears to have been about homosexuality. I’m just horrified the path my earnest One-ness took when I was so locked into fundamentalism still.
Spokane, WA