New chunks of family history were revealed; equal parts hilarious and dramatic. We gazed at stars we’d forgotten existed. We celebrated those who had worked so hard to build their dreams. We mourned the end of an era.

I have high hopes of writing more about all of it sometime soon, for now, I can’t find words other than these: I. Am. Thankful.

Brown Jug Liquors was the shop next to the grocery. In Anchorage, you couldn’t buy beer, wine or booze in your supermarket – but unlike the south, buying on Sunday wasn’t an issue. A small inconvenience – you had to exit the store, take 10 paces, and step into another store. I’m sure this deterred alcoholics across the city. *eye roll*

Mom and dad liked The Drink, and we little people were known to escort them on their errands, up to and including the stops at Brown Jug. We were also known to be pains in the ass measurable both on the Richter scale and by the metric shit ton, so there were strict guidelines for these fantastical field trips: don’t ask for anything, don’t quibble with your siblings, keep your hands in your pockets.

Kevin always was better at being a kiss ass than I was, so it’s little wonder that on that particular night when he walked into Brown Jug with dad his hands were in his pockets. Pockets his prepubescent brain couldn’t tell his body quickly enough to extract themselves from as he hit a puddle of melted snow and went face first into the linoleum.

With braces.

Poor kid. I’d have rather had the back of the brush for bumping a bottle of bourbon.

Not Kev though, he’s never known an enemy, a regret, or a hardship. He tells that story better than anyone, and laughs all the way through it. Champ.

Among the family being collected, a small miracle will occur: my siblings and I will be together. In the same place, at the same time, and not for a wedding or a funeral. We’ll have a few events to attend over our 5 day stay and will leave the rest to wander the city of our collective births that we left nearly 40 years (**gasp**) ago, to explore what we used to know and rediscover each other – the people we used to think we knew.

It’s been twenty years since we lived under the same roof. In the years since we’ve had braces put on and taken off, body parts pierced, tattoos added and avoided, hair grown and lost, spouses added and removed, children collected, hobbies entertained and abandoned and, of course, we said good bye to our parents in those years as well.

I’m excited and anxious and tentative about it all – the adventures we’ll embark on and the conversations we’ll have and the small spats that may erupt – because in the end we’re siblings and that’s what siblings do.

One thing I know for sure is this: those five days will be brimming with vivid priceless memories and oozing with magic.

“With every goodbye we go to seed again, this is how we come to make family from strangers, this is how we learn ‘always’, we are candles lit from each other.”

I’ve butchered a poem that held me enraptured in my teenage years, one that resonated with me and made my bones vibrate with an understanding of grief I didn’t realize anyone else was capable of. Here it’s like cheap beef stew meat in a styrofoam boat – still delicious but not nearly as much as if you’d been given the entire mess of meat to do admire.

Just the same, the words are still there. Sixteen years since I lost my mother, fourteen since I lost my father. Now I stand on the sidelines of life’s gymnasium – watching people I love find their rhythm in the dance of the mourning. I’m just the awkward girl with the glasses, the lazy eye and the ill-fitting dress, they’re the football quarterbacks trying to figure out what to do with their hands and attempting to look relaxed.

We all suck at this. We’re supposed to. It’s not supposed to be easy or come naturally, it’s supposed to ravage us and spin us around, and when we get our equilibrium back in check, when we can focus on the horizon again without tipping over, we’ll see a present there with pretty little bow.

If there’s one gift those I’ve/we’ve recently lost have graciously and silently granted, it’s their example of this: live. Work hard, and live the life you want to live.

Bill spent the last 20 years on a lake almost every day, fishing. He shared his passion and his love with his grandchildren, his friends, and his wife of 60 years. Karleen spent the last 16 years cooking, baking, visiting with friends and family, and driving her sister half mad (*giggle*). She died in the same house she was born in – the house her father built, on the farm he owned and worked, and it was exactly how she wanted it to be.

While I’m still trying to figure out how to balance the greedy “want” from the soul filling, world rewarding “want” and what that means for my actions, activities, hobbies, etc., I’ve found yet another quote to pin to my mental lapel (in hopes others will see it even without seeing it):

“I don’t want life to imitate art. I want life to be art.” – Ernst Fischer