And away we go…

It is family reunion time again! This year, we are on the West Coast, the coast of my birth. And I am having panic attacks!!!

I love my family more than anything else in the world. My mom started these every-three-year reunions back when my daughter was 3 and my son 9 months…our West Coast based family had slowly but surely dispersed throughout the country, going off to college and then jobs and then marriage. Now the babies of our first reunions are grown up and mostly gone and the reunions continue.

So, if I love my family so much, why am I having panic attacks? Well, a little bit of it is that I will miss my dog. Boo and I are pretty much constant companions…well, except when hub and Boo go out on the boat, fishing or just cruising. If he was small enough to fit under my seat, he would be coming with me. But he’s not and I’m just not willing to put him in the belly of the plane for a one week trip. So, I guess I am officially one of those people who love their pets almost as much as their kids.

Another bit of it is that family reunions are a lot of work. Not the cooking, cleaning, who’s sleeping where part of it…more the “how long can we all be together before old feelings poke their little heads in and things get tense so let’s all play nice” kind of work…since we only have this one little window of time to store up hugs and laughs and memories and love, who wants to spend any of it “feeling”…but there is no getting past the feeling…it is what it is.

And then there is that hideously, hatefully, silly vain me that doesn’t want anyone to see that I am older now, plumper, with wrinkled, age-spotted, droopy body parts that barely fit into a bathing suit any more…we will be surrounded by the active, athletic, enthusiastic, gorgeous YOUNGSTERS who used to be US!!!! At least those in my generation and above are pretty much in the same boat…

All that said, I wouldn’t trade a moment of time spent with my mom and other dad, sisters and cousins and nieces and nephews…so, off we go! See you on the flip side!