For the past 3 weeks I’ve been galavanting with the littlest. The following blogs are tiny glimpses into that journey.
It’s an amazing thing when you find yourself surrounded by a family you are so comfortable with it’s as if you are one of their own. Where you can cook and do the dishes and rifle through the fridge for leftovers. Where you can wash their kids underwear with yours and the dogs don’t sniff your crack anymore. Where you can stay up late watching HGTV and they can go to bed early with exhaustion from long days at work.
Where axe throwing and slack lining and night time glow trampoline parties are the norm.
Where you pick tomatoes in the rain.
I’m lucky. Lucky to have friends like that. Lucky to have shared meals, campfires, dirty diapers, nights on the couch, prayers, emergency room visits, run ins with park rangers, nerf weapon fights, late night rounds of whiskey, beach walks, baptisms, birthday parties, secrets, bad haircuts and countless amounts of tears and laughter. I’m lucky to call these people friends.
And as much time as we have spent together, I have yet to visit them in their new-to-some-old-to-others home. They moved to San Diego with us 15 years ago. And we lived a good long chunk of life together. But, 2 years ago, the moved to Oregon, 2 blocks away from where the feminine half of this unit grew up. I have seen them countless times in the past two years, some in San Diego, some in Truckee. But I have yet to see them in their town; their new hood. With the loss of my Aunt’s house and a 98 year old grandmother all within 4 hrs of each other, it was past time for an Oregon road trip.
I had it in mind to spend 2 nights with them. We spent 4. And I couldn’t be happier about that. While she worked (unfortunately), I stole Melissa’s husband and kids and snuck away to the coast for a day. It sounds more inappropriate than it was, believe me. One of the cool things about this family is that literally any match up of people can hang out and nothing feels awkward. We played rowdy games in the car and headed 2 hours west to Tilamook, OR. It was no one’s fault but our own, (and the fact that the Tilamook creamery has nothing but dairy products) that we shoved our guts full of cheese curds and grilled cheese and Mac n cheese and continued on to a coastal hideaway of a beach none of us had ever been to.
The Oregon coast is so beautiful. So. Beautiful. We hiked down a lush trail from the parking lot, descending out of the fog and onto a wide expanse of beach flanked with cliffs covered in trees that grew right down to the sand, caves, waterfalls and a stream ending it’s journey straight into the sea. Pants were instantly rolled up and we flung ourselves into the knee deep whitewash. The sun peeked through the fog intermittently and we scampered around finding nooks and crannies of interest and playing with reckless abandon.
Abandon. Letting go. Exhaling. And for the first time, in a long time, I was inspired by the revelation of the simple beauty of that feeling. Existing in light and fog and expanses of sand. Of children full of wonder and adventure. Of time that doesn’t need to be kept.
[And, yes, we played with bull whip seaweed nonstop]
[And also, yes, we carried it a mile up the trail and put it in the car]
[And also, yes, we brought it on a 10hr drive in a garbage bag in the trunk back to my parents house in Reno]
