Nothing More Precious Than Family

The Boston Herald

Jeannie and I used to say that even the road connects us, that it isn't just family - Jeannie is my husband's cousin - or our children or our love for one another that links us. But a ribbon of highway that runs from my door to hers, 142 miles and a straight shot - no twists and turns, just two hours and 20 minutes on a good day.

I used to make the trip often, sometimes in a single day, leaving early in the morning and driving home late at night. But most times, the best times, were when I’d spend the night. Or when she'd strap her kids into the car, and then they'd all be on my doorstep - staying over, sleeping in my kids' beds, sitting in my kids' chairs, filling up my house again with small people, my small people now big and gone.

Sometimes it strikes you, how lucky you are. How the very ordinariness of life is its biggest blessing. How you don't have to climb Mount Everest to reach great heights, all you have to do is open a door and step into a familiar house and see the faces of people you love.

We used to spend all the holidays together, my husband and kids, her husband and kids: Thanksgiving mornings, Christmas Eves, Easter Days. We'd stuff turkeys and open presents and color eggs, and talk and laugh and eat and watch old movies,  all of us one big happy family.

It was the best of times.

But times change. Kids grow up. They go off to school. They fall in love. They spend holidays somewhere else. They get married and have children of their own. Even Ewen, Jeannie's youngest, the baby I saw born just a blink ago, is in sixth grade now, learning, this week, about possessives.

I sat on the couch with him one night last week. I drove to their house this time, after too long a time. They hadn't come for Christmas. Thanksgiving was the last time we were together.

It's never all of us anymore. But it was all of them that night. Even Jeannie’s oldest came home.

I sat on the couch with Ewen trying to explain possessives.

And it got me thinking how you don't have to POSSESS to enjoy, how it's enough simply to bear witness to things.

I am witness to this family. They are chapters in a book I never tire of reading. One by one they tell their stories, and I listen and think, how did I get this lucky? 

I wonder sometimes why God loves us. I wonder especially at this time of year. I wonder what this Easter season is really all about.

And then I think about opening the door to Jeannie's house and I know.