A Walker in the Suburbs

With two kids in college and one in high school, hanging out together is a matter of timing and luck. Someone goes out later than she had planned; another stays in. Tom and I go to bed later than we would otherwise. Eventually, we all end up in the kitchen.

We don’t do anything special: We laugh, complain, roll our eyes, hug, nag, eat a bowl of cereal and go our separate ways.

But these moments are what I remember when we’re apart.

Yesterday I traveled to Maryland to see my parents, who are visiting from Kentucky. My mother is starting a museum; my father is planning his next Eighth Air Force reunion. They are proof that getting older is not just about loss; it may also be about gain.

Mom and Dad are children of the Depression — but they are not depressed. They come from an era where people largely stayed in their hometowns, where most interaction was face-to-face. They are old enough to tell it like it is. After I’m with them I feel clear-headed and strong. I feel optimistic.

Our youngest daughter, Celia, was born 16 years ago today, and by preschool she was already exhibiting a sense of style, a certain flair. She did not inherit these traits; they are her own through and through.

Celia loves to shop — and I shop as little as possible. In the last year we have reached a tentative truce. She shops with friends and easily doubles or triples the amount of time I spend in stores. But sometimes we shop together. And then the fun begins.

“Oh no, Mom,” she says when she sees me eying something for myself. “Why do you always pick out the most shapeless dress?” Sometimes her only comment is a single arched eyebrow. I am relearning through Celia to put the fun back in fashion.

A youngest daughter is a link to the future, a push to the present. She is a sweet reminder of youth.

Happy birthday, Celia!

A holiday is like a wave; it races up from afar, engulfs and buoys us, then retreats. When family is scattered, traveling is the best way to stay close. So we traveled, and we celebrated, together. Now the wave has receded. We are all home.

But we have the memories of being together. The yellow building on the right is where we went for lunch on Saturday, just the five of us, sitting at a tiny table meant for four in a cramped place that accommodates 30 at the very most. It reminded me of our dinner table on a good night: the inside jokes, the rolling of eyes, the togetherness. I miss it already.

We’ve never been a family that goes around the table and says what each is thankful for. But if we were, I would say today that I am thankful to have all these people I love under one roof: my parents and husband and children, my brother and sister, my nieces. A few people are missing, but all in all a good turnout.

So pass the turkey and the stuffing and the pumpkin pie. Family is the bounty that blesses us best.

When our girls began looking at colleges, one of our rules was that the school be no more than a day’s drive away. Of course there were questions: Why just a day? And what do you mean by day? We explained that we didn’t have a 24-hour marathon in mind. Just a normal seven- or eight-hour drive. When you live where we do, this covers a lot of ground. From Boston to Charleston to Ohio — and plenty of places in between.

I was thinking of this yesterday as I drove to Kentucky to help out my dad, who had fallen the night before and broken his shoulder. I could leave Virginia at noon and be in Lexington by dinner time.

Air travel has changed our view of space and distance, has made it possible to stay close to friends and family in a way that would have been impossible a generation or two ago. I know that jobs, education and other circumstances of life may not always allow for such proximity. But I do know that yesterday, I was glad to be only a day’s drive away from these people I love.

Yesterday 70 of us gathered in an old monastery boarding school to visit with people we barely knew or didn’t at all know, first cousins, second cousins, third cousins, with many degrees of “removed.” People connected by the slenderest but strongest of threads. Family. We came with covered dish and grandma’s jam cake, with old photographs and family trees, with stories and reminiscences. There were many pairs of dark, deep-set eyes. So many of us have them that they must be a family trait.

Afterward I looked at Dad’s photo album, a gift from his sister, my Aunt Dolly, gone now. Inside were pictures of two of the cousins I had just seen, only instead of 75 and 70 they were 12 and 7 — a long-legged boy, a pigtailed girl — all their lives ahead of them. And seeing both in one day, the real people and their younger selves, was a punch to the gut. Because people, even the best ones, do not live forever.

“Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon.
Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted,
And human love will be seen at its height.
Live in fragments no longer.
Only connect…”

–E.M. Forster, Howards End