Reunion

I have eaten blueberries and not complained. I have eaten food with a fork and left my chopsticks in their case. I have drunk bottled water, that abomination akin to selling air. I have eaten meat, not as a condiment but as a full course, a slab of steak on my plate.

Forgive me father for I have sinned.

But then, I was traveling wasn’t I? I’ve been trained to be easy when on the road. Things can’t be exactly the way you want them when you have only your car and what you bothered to pack. Don’t offend, don’t be picky, don’t be difficult.

I have worn sunscreen, though the blessed sunburn came anyway. I have eaten things with sugar and drunk things with milk. I have eaten food I did not first pray over. I have worn sandals.

Forgive me mother for I have sinned.

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“Wake up.”

It’s Papa’s voice. Above me. I open my eyes. Something is odd here. I’m lying in my bed in Olympia. Papa lives two hours away.

I sit up.

He’s talking through my window which I had left open for the night. It’s definitely him. I can see his red beard framed face looking in at me - trimmed since I last saw it.

“Are you ready for our trip?” He asks.

“Trip?”

“We’re heading off to the midwest. Today is the day.”

“That’s on the fourteenth.” I’m beginning to come more awake now.

“We need to be -there- by the fourteenth.”

“You told me . . . “

“No . . . “

“Why don’t you come inside.” I tell him realizing he’s still talking to me through my window. “I’ll go unlock the door.”

I’ve been planning for this trip for some time now. My grandfather on my father’s side - grandpa Greenwood - passed away. A planned family reunion which we were not going to attend turned into a memorial which we were. The original plan was to head down the coast by train - giving me the possibility of visiting loved ones in Southern California - going across to New Mexico to join up with my uncle - and then proceeding to the meeting in Colorado from there.

When I had called and confirmed I was coming Papa informed me it was cheaper to rent a car and drive straight across. Minus my bribe, but already having said yes I planned to use the trip in other ways. It would be my deadline for the entrance essay I have to submit to get into my class next year. I would get my learner's permit and practice driving on our way there and back.

I had been taking practice tests just the night before.

Now - none of those things accomplished - Papa was sitting on my bed. His rented car was parked outside, and I was faced with the question of whether it was worth it. I hate traveling. It takes me outside my perfectly constructed world - made of best practices and rituals worn into the stone of my life. I would be leaving an unfinished test, a dozen plans and appointments, my internet access, a lot of food that might spoil, my plants who might perish in my absence - and for what? Ten days I didn’t have to pay for myself? Meeting an extended family I’ve never been close to? Going to remember a grandfather I’ve met maybe five times?

In the end I said yes. Papa waited as I packed, postponed engagements, tidied my room so I wouldn’t have to come back to a mess, arranged to have my plants watered, packed my test in the empty hope I would work on it, gathered what spoilable food I could, and hopped in the car with Papa to be off on adventure.

And why? - a few months ago I got an email from myself. I had left myself signed in on a school computer. The email reminded me to remember to sign out and ended with a few words of wisdom. “Never opt out of a funeral because you feel uncomfortable.” I told myself. “It’s one of those things you’ll regret.”

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Moments.

The rest stop where we speculated about the blinking red lights, the rumbling that wasn’t the highway, and found them in the morning to be great wind turbines. The closest I’ve ever been to my favorite form of alternate energy.

A song sung in thanks against an already dark sky on the highest point in Canyonlands. A pebble I’d taken a hologram of left as offering.

A rest stop full of moths, where I climbed on the roof. Only driving away did I catch a moth that had gotten in the car and found it delicious. “Go back! I want more!”

The conversation, heated, where I discovered just how much I cared that black lives matter and Daesh not be equated with Islam. Head butted against my conservative Aunt Theresa and Uncle Dan’s collective surity that their way is right.

A movie - where I cried. Just a couple tears, but so unusual for me. Called Inside out it pulled me inside out. Another, the music man foisted on me right after. Familiar songs stuck in my head.

An argument between relatives in the car. A funeral home. A lovely lunch. Trying to follow my Aunt and cousin’s conversations, with half an ear on my uncle talking at me. Papa left behind for two days.

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Relatives, a whole host of them, and never have I been so comfortable with strangers. We walked in the door of the large rented cabin, just as dinner was finishing but there was enough to share. Some I recognized. Aunt Dena and Uncle Randy. My cousin Aubry and her husband Michael. I had been fourteen last time I saw them but they haven’t changed so much.

Strangers, yet blood of my blood, people in common. Where normally I’m shy here I was confident. “How are you related to me?” - “Oh I’ve heard of you!” “So good to finally meet you.” “Yes, I’m Kimble’s son.”

The first family, and the one that ended up adopting me on outings, was Kristin’s - I’d heard the name but hadn’t known she was my cousin. Her daughter Sierra was the closest to my age and the first person I introduced myself to. I’m the youngest of my cousins, my father having had me when he was forty. Kristin as I understand it, the oldest.

Later I was told not to take Kristin too seriously. Everyone loves her. Everyone feels a special connection to her - but she and I really had a special connection - I know it.

Kristin glowed with some inner light. She told me how Papa had been one of her heroes growing up. Stopping in at her mother’s whenever he was close. Hitchhiking or catching trains as he always was. I got an image of a younger him, a favorite uncle.

Second evening we ate soup with peppers that I didn’t pick out. I saw people going outside so I went that way as well, and it ended up being the kids table, with Theresa the only other adult. The children chattered, and at some point they mentioned they had been eating ants.

“Pan eats all bugs.” Theresa mentions.

“Really?” the kids are impressed. “What’s your favorite bug to eat?”
“Moths.” I tell them. I’d just had those delicious ones from the rest stop. “If clean flannel sheets were taste - that’s what they’d taste like.”

And so for the rest of the trip I became Pan the bug eater, beloved of children. I arrived the next morning to learn that Kristin had caught a moth for her youngest daughter Jaiden to eat. Good parenting if you ask me. She said it didn’t taste like much so I had to catch her another one. We bonded over that.

Lauren has five, Aubrey has three. It wasn’t until the last day that I finally got all the children’s names.

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Moments

Papa telling a story after the slideshow of Grandpa’s life was over. A good story and well told. “I’ve never felt such warmth from an entire room full of people before.”

River rafting, on big inflatable inner tubes made for that purpose. Little Aviana was ready to go and so was I. The others were still pumping up their tubes and dawdling. There’s a moment where I’m about to wait for an adult - and then I realize I am an adult. I can take responsibility. I hold onto her inner tube as we spin around down the rapids. Laughing as I fall off and then she does.

Later after I’ve swum over and nabbed Avi and her inner tube after she’s tumbled off. Jaden asks me “Please don’t save me. I want to practice my swimming.”

Nights spent tossing everything from frisbees to footballs back and forth, calling out people’s names until the sun sets. It’s the first time I’ve ever held a football, but I feel like I do okay. Sierra and her father throw it back and forth whenever they can. I love watching them together. They’re comfortable with each other in a way I so rarely see between fathers and teenage daughters.

Dan showed me a tree that smells like vanilla by our hotel. By night I make my way out to it and sit with my back to it, occasionally sniffing the bark as I mastruabate to the moon.

On the way back we swing by papa’s old haunts in Colorado - and he tells me stories of his time there. Nothing of his is still standing but we find his little town has turned into an artsy Port Towsendish kind of place. We have dinner in a destination Italian bakery. I eat my fancy Chanterelle laden grains with a fork.

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We stop halfway through the Cascades. Papa is sleepy, and pulls off onto a sideroad with a big open spot at the end. Beyond is a big building with “no entry” posted all around - something government related - and a trail that leads to the peak of the mountain we are passing.

“Half an hour.” He tells me. I get out while he leans back his seat and pulls his hat over his eyes.

Rain is blessedly misting down around me. I take a deep breath and for the first time in ten days I find that I can breath. Despite the elevation here we’re still lower than the high desert we’ve been in. The air feels rich.

I make my way down into a gorge towards the highway. Plants greet me like old friends. Huckleberry and cedar. Moss hanging from everything. I walk deeper effortlessly following the paths laid out to me. Here atop a fallen log, there in the parting of ferns. I can move here, silent and quick, as I could not move in the sage filled scrublands, crowded with low gnarled trees.
Soon I’m overlooking the highway, leaning out along an ancient willow, sheltered dry from the drizzle, and then back a different way then I came. I’m squatting to poop when I see a stump of a recently fallen tree, base splintered into needles aching at the sky. Done, I go over and find two perfect wooden blades, wrenching them free of their base.

Then it begins to thunder. Rumbling low overhead, and filling my chest with the aching thunder always brings. I run along a log, whipping my newfound blades around me, thrilling in the grace holding a blade always gives. Thunder rumbles again.

I find some devil’s club at the end of this log. It fills me with such joy to see my new friend here and I look at it closely. It’s different than I’m used to. Perhaps just young? Thunder rumbles again.

It’s been half an hour and I make my way up to the car. Papa is asleep. I drop the litter I’ve collected by the car - to be reclaimed - and dash up the hill on the other side. Up the mountain but not on the trail. I’m breathing heavily, but every breath is heavenly, as I sprint from log to log - rock, to dip, to deertrail - ascending. And then suddenly I’m at a small rise, a dip heading down for a bit before heading back up.

Before me, at this highest point, there is a big tree, with a small cleared area around it, and a big stone at its base. I kneel and plant one sword into the soft dirt before it. Leaving it there. Then hot, I take off my shirt and begin dancing with my remaining blade. Thunder keeps rumbling, and I feel myself dancing with the thunder. Not bladedancer I think to myself, thunderdancer.

And it’s in that moment, training before the tree in the mountains, breath hot, air damp around me, swatting at mosquitoes, big fat ones that taste like blood, with thunder rumbling overhead - it’s then that I realize who I am. I am this. This moment with my sword. No more and no less, and it took going to the desert and coming back to see it.
I am Pan, raised on the mountain of eagles in the great northwet. I am dedication to this tree. I am fierce forest runner and friend of devil’s club. I dance with thunder.

I am this.

*****************************************************************************

Papa dropped me off back home later that day. I got all my things in one trip, waved goodbye, and saw him off.

I have eaten blueberries and not complained. I have eaten food with a fork and left my chopsticks in their case. I have drunk bottled water, that abomination akin to selling air. I have eaten meat, not as a condiment but as a full course, a slab of steak on my plate.

Forgive me father for I have sinned.

But then, I was traveling wasn’t I? I’ve been trained to be easy when on the road. Things can’t be exactly the way you want them when you have only your car and what you bothered to pack. Don’t offend, don’t be picky, don’t be difficult.

I have worn sunscreen, though the blessed sunburn came anyway. I have eaten things with sugar and drunk things with milk. I have eaten food I did not first pray over. I have worn sandals.

Forgive me mother for I have sinned.