This past month I took my mother from Atlanta to Denver, Colo., to meet her great-granddaughter, Nova, for the first time. The plan was for my sister, her husband and her youngest daughter to also drive up from Colorado Springs.
With us on the trip was my mother’s feisty nonagenarian partner of 20 years and a whole collection of uncertainties and expectations about how the visit might go. Like most families I know, our time together is sometimes less than harmonious. Which might be putting it lightly. My husband summed it up best when he said something I cannot print (but might tell you if you email me).
For my part, I managed to keep my cool on all but two occasions. The first involved a pre-arranged lunch date to which three people showed up without appetites. The second involved my attempt to schedule an Uber ride on my iPhone while others stood nearby, asking repeatedly if every car that drove past was “our” car when, in fact, I was so busy telling them “no” over and over that I hadn’t had a free moment to request one. Harmless, inoffensive stuff that, when placed in the context of family, is enough to make fire erupt in a straight line from your ears.
There were moments of joy as well. In our hotel lobby, my mother, my sister, my niece and I piled onto sofas and chatted easily while little Nova watched us all. When at last she concluded whatever a 2-year-old concludes that makes her approach one person (my mother) and never another (me), she sidled over to my mother and flung herself into her lap. I took photos like crazy, the paparazzi on the sidelines of a celebrity sighting. This was what we had come for, this beautiful, historic, emotional moment of connection. I looked around at my sister, my niece and Nova.
“You’re responsible for all this, Mom,” I said, beaming.
“I know,” she said, beaming back.
Later at the lunch where three people weren’t hungry and at dinner where certain family members refused to sit by certain other family members, I looked around, this time without beaming, and thought again, “You’re responsible for all this, Mom.”
But the bottom line is this: 10 family members spent almost three solid days together. We laughed and argued and jabbed and chatted. We walked and shopped and joked and sometimes we all even ate together. I took hundreds of photos, including several of my sister looking through a photo album in a surrealistic moment of life reflecting life reflecting itself. Great-grandmother and great-granddaughter, once united, were almost inseparable. Nova played with my mother’s earrings, ran her hands over her hair and urgently offered up every word she knew.
And in a flash it was over. Nova and her mom went back to their apartment; my sister and her family drove back to Colorado Springs; my mother and her partner flew home to Atlanta; and my husband and I embarked on another sort of family trip: We went with four friends to a cabin in the Rocky Mountain National Park, where we hiked, picnicked, cooked together, swam, talked late into the night and celebrated two birthdays.
By the time it was all over, I’d been on two dazzling family trips. In one, four generations came together for the rare opportunity to engage with our past and our future. And in the other, six friends came together and simply enjoyed the present.
Two trips, two families, one takeaway: I am incredibly lucky to have so many people to call “family,” in whom and with whom I can see and appreciate my yesterdays, todays and tomorrows.
Dana Shavin’s memoir, “The Body Tourist,” is available online and locally at Star Line Books. Contact her at Dana@Danashavin.com.