Category: Holy Daze

I spent the last week recovering from my family reunion. We have one every five years, and this was the tenth such event. The family is spread around the country pretty well (except for the northeast) so we have been rotating the location ever since my grandmother sold the farm. This time we were in the Pacific Northwest, on the coast — Manzanita, Oregon, to be exact.

It was a wonderful time for me and, I think, for all 35 attendees. Did I say I was recovering? Well, yes. It was a very full four days. Air travel is no fun, and I was especially anxious about traveling with a toddler, but our daughter did better than expected on four flights totaling over ten hours of air time. It’s actually Xy who’s had the hardest time of it. She doesn’t travel well in any event, and hanging with in-laws over the holidays is of course stressful, and she was coming down with something when we started. She’s got just about the worst cough I’ve ever heard and I think maybe an ear infection too. She’s on an antibiotic now, plus some steroids, but she’s not getting better as quickly as we’d hoped.

Yes, it’s nice to see my extended family, though to tell the truth it’s hard to really catch up when there are so many people and time is so brief. But there’s more to it than just catching up.