A Trip Home

I have always referred to it (the trip) as going home, I have not lived there for 19 years but when I cross that California line I feel “at home”. This was a trip for my siblings to get together with our parents and talk about the not so fun stuff in life, planning for the future, the will’s, the estate etc. My parents decided to lighten the mood right from the start, as we arrived late, 11 pm at night, I walked in the house to find this…..

They thought it was funny, I was confused hahaha. I lightened up when I saw the flowers in hand and heard them laughing. The weekend was filled with long talks, lots of good food and just a sense of “being home”.

My mom enjoys almost nothing more than the cool pool in the summer and even better her water aerobics class. This day she happened to be the substitute instructor to a pool full of ladies ready to work out. My sister REALLY didn’t want to join but did and I think enjoyed it. The smile on my mom’s face every time she introduced her daughters was priceless.

I love to run in different places, and having a training run on the schedule while in Cali was a perfect opportunity to run through the old neighborhood. Can I just say when you are young everything seems so big, so grand and as I ran through the streets that I once experienced my childhood on they seemed so small. I was lost in memories as the miles passed quickly, running past houses and recalling what friend had lived there, yards I remember playing in and the street corner I would walk to and meet my childhood bestie because it was exactly half way from her house to mine. The corner store we would scrape together all of our change to walk the mile, at the time I was sure it was more like 5 miles, to and buy candy.

I passed the house I grew up in pausing to see it how I remembered it not how it currently looks totally remodeled and different. That house was truly “the house that built me” (I think that’s a country song title lol). There is something extremely therapeutic about going back to your past and that day I needed that! I made my way back to my parent’s house, hot, sweaty, fulfilled.

It doesn’t happen often, in fact I couldn’t remember in the past 20 years more than a handful of times us 3 sibling had all been together, it is sad really, our lives are not that busy, we don’t live that far apart that we cannot make this happen more often! It brought our parents so much joy and they deserve us to make more of an effort.