Traveling Together

For me, today is the start of a week at Lake Ninevah near Mt. Holly, a place long held close to my heart. Not for the first time, I will have days with my sister enjoying the water, the back roads, the perfect summer white, and morning "dips."

Tomorrow is the start of a week in my little house by sister and brother, Loretta and Richard from San Antonio and Philadelphia, respectively. I think I found all the weird things in the house and have fixed or explained them to death for my visitors. I like to think of Loretta and Richard as guests--they are coming into an amazingly clean house with wine and flowers to greet them along with a veritable treasure trove of Visitor Center information. And I am half sorry I won't meet them.

My late brother Bill and I took a vacation to the Southern Oregon Coast with Elderhostel back in about 2006. It was after his stem cell transplant and he was feeling good. Among the firs and dunes we visited as grown-ups, we found freedom from the assigned or assumed family roles of big sister/second mother and pesky little brother. I had a chance to see how at ease Bill was with strangers, how he engaged them in conversation and made everyone laugh. It was almost but not quite like meeting someone new. I could see why he had been successful as a salesman and businessman, how he pulled stories out of people they didn't know they were telling.
Unlike me, Bill had a prodigious memory for the finest and funniest details of our lives as well as the names of all the firs (there are seven in Oregon and after naming the Douglas I am done). He named the hawks and wildflowers we were seeing, and spotted the eagle on our boat trip up the Rogue River.

Bill took that trip with me to help me over a rough spot in my life and I treasure the memories of it, perhaps even more so now that he is gone. I hope Loretta and Richard find joy and new connections in these beautiful Vermont hills and valleys, just as Bill and I did in the forests and dunes on the Oregon coast.