the first day

I just arrived back exhausted from a week away from the tribe. 'Hair' opened at the Kennedy Center the same day my Mama Jan's memorial was happening in St Helena CA. Jan, my bonus mom, passed away last week from a 3 month battle with cancer. I bought a ticket. well my company manager bought a ticket FOR me less than 3 hours before I left DC with not $2 to my name. I would of bought it myself but I coudn't even afford a cab ride to the Metro station. but i called the cab to come pick me up anyway because, as good as I am with public transportation, for all i know I could of ended up in the Potomac river. I'm not quite sure when it was: after multiple swipes of my credit card or my dumbfounded/naive expression of 'this never happens so please feel pity for me' when the cabbie decided I think that I wasnt worth the time. so he took my license, wrote down the important numbers and made me promise I'd send the Bethesda cab co. a check the day I return.

Jan was no 'step' mom by any stretch. she was ALL  mom, willingly taking on a family of 6 kids, at a time when we were all practically going through adolescence. for 18 years she was our mom. when Tim would sneak out of the window at night, she got up and nailed the window shut. when I jumped off the 2nd story roof with a tarp parachute into the pool, she let me down easy. Fast forward to my nephew Ryder being born into the world, and then Lucy, and then Tiegen, and Ella. she passed before she could meet Ella.

And so in Napa, all the kids came to celebrate the ending of one life and the beginning of 2 new lives. the cycle never stops. but it was here this past week, that each of us siblings came together as adults feeling what it was like to be here and now. Theres always a bit of ADHD in the air when our family comes together but this week was different. as we say in Claudes trip in Hair, 'our eyes are open'. There was no discussing the weather, there was only gratitude for eachother. And to be able to look into and through eachother in a way we havent ever experienced. And I think Jan was looking down in hopes that we'd find our happiness, our bliss, and that we'd love each day from here on out.