My mom was blessed with a big family. She has two brothers and two sisters. And then the blessing multiplied when all five of them had kids - my generation. There are a lot of us...when my grandfather passed away, the most moving part was when my uncle read all of our names, from the first granddaughter to the youngest great-grandson. What a heritage my grandmother and grandfather created. The best part about being one of the names read amongst all the others, was the "being a part of" all the names read. We are close.
Now, we're all grown and at different stages in our lives for sure and living in different states too. But we have these memories that are like glue - the best kind of glue around. The kind that all good relationships are bound together by. It all revolves around time spent together - purposeful, sacrificial, mostly fun, sometimes crazy...but all carved away for meaningful time.
This is a long awaited written thank you to my mom and my aunt Sue and my aunt Kathie for giving us kids the gift of time.
Every summer, they took all of us kids to the beach for a whole week - a week without dads (they were working) and my uncles' kids joined in on the fun too. Now that I have kids, whenever I tackle a vacation with them, I think of our times at the beach. When I take my kids to the coast, I feel great to get them down on the sand for an hour or so. My aunts and mom let us play for hours on end....And through the years we experienced a lice outbreak, sunburns, emergency trips, no water (they took us to a hotel to shower and the public bathroom at the beach access to go to the bathroom)...water balloons off the upper deck, a punched in wall when we wrestled a bit too hard and the list goes on. But "the moms" never seemed derailed by it all. I'm in amazement at it today.
Now a days we squeeze in a day or weekend trip, and whoever can join in the fun is welcome. We had one of those days yesterday. The memories were right there at our fingertips as we picked up each shell on the sand, in our laughs as we recalled funny moments, and above all in our hearts - the hearts that will always be held together by sand, saltwater and three sisters that made it happen.
I love you all!
