Family?

The Bridled with Joy staff is still in Vermont enjoying a peaceful Sunday. We saw Jeff's dad and stepmom Celia and brother off at the airport about 2 hours ago. We will see them again in 2 months and 1 week and 6 days at our wedding. While we enjoyed a wedding-free reprieve this weekend, it is coming to a close. We are in the less than two and a half months zone. Guess which one of us is freaking out? Right. Good guess. Me.

We made a list of all the outstanding tasks and appointments on the flight to Vermont. It honestly looks very manageable. But that's the bad news. That means that it's not actually the tasks and logistics that are causing the anxiety. The appointment to see the Judge or meet with the band (No CELEBRATION by Kool and Gang, no matter how much money you are slipped) actually seems calming to me. When my mind tries to imagine what it will feel like to be me in January 2009, Mrs. Christie O. Tate Ellis, I get such butterflies I feel like I am going to hurl my Vermont sharp cheddar omlette all over the Sheraton's lobby.

This weekend I came face to face with my own internal conflict. Or one of them. I have been saying for over a decade that I really want to be part of a family. As in, my own family who lives under my roof and where I am one of the central players. I want to be missed. I want someone who wants my flight itineraries and who wants me to call him when I get to my hotel when I travel out of town for business. I adore my friends and love them like family and in some cases better than family, but it's not the same as having family. It's mostly that feeling of someone who knows where you are all the time.

I remember the most upsetting part about 9/11 for me-- as someone who had no friends or family in NY or DC at the time-- was that I had no idea who I would call if I was on a plane that was going down. I felt haunted in fall 2001 by the fact that the person I honestly thought I would call is my therapist, and I barely knew him at the time. Sure, I knew that I could have called any of the future caboose riders, but they would be talking to husbands, children, and their own families. And I love my relationship with Jeff for more reasons -- so many that if I listed them, I would run out of Internet-- and it's also challenging for me to be a member of a family. It's hard for me not to be in control of my own schedule, food, meals, time. And those things are so much easier to control when you are not connected to a family. When I was single, I may have been suicidal with loneliness and despair, but I could go to the gym whenever I wanted. I could also have breakfast foods for dinner or talk on the phone during my dinner of baked Tostitos and chihuahua cheese. I could. It sucked but I could do it. And I did, night after night.

This weekend was as far away from my single sad sap days as I ever have been. This reunion for Jeff's dad was such a big deal for Jeff's family, which is now very close to being my family. Jeff's dad has eschewed many Pueblo reunions for reasons that are not hard to imagine after hearing his story and learning the details of that horrible chapter in his life. What made him decide to show up here in the Green Mountain state and reconnect with all of these old friends and mariner-mates, is something only he can say. Jeff's dad is a fun-loving, jovial man, who is also very private and almost shy. Behind his reserve he remains inscrutable to me, his future-daughter-in-law that he has met only twice now. I was touched by how generous he was to me-- he treated me as lovingly as he treats his two beloved sons. So this is family. I pretty much knew I was part of the family when we engaged in a long conversation about the virtues and drawbacks of bidets.

I felt myself holding back in some places during the weekend, which was not because I was trying to make a good impression on them. This roving band of Ellis' trekking through Vermont wasn't looking for me to be prim, proper, or polite. Celia made this clear when she offered Jeff and me some marital advice on the shores of Lake Champlain. This is a family-friendly blog so I can't exactly repeat what she said, but she basically came out in favor of us not holding anything back, especially bodily gases. If you ever see her, ask her about the jar and the bathtub. She's a marvel in her sheer lack of shame and her commitment to stay open-eyed and open-hearted to whatever life tosses her way.

I held back because it's hard for me to connect. Whenever I connect, I mean really really connect with another person, I cry. It's strange that it hurts like it hurts to knick your funny bone or to get a massage when the therapist gets that little knot on the back of your shoulder that has been sort of aching. It's the feeling of a long-hard muscle that has been tight longer than it has been loose, suddenly releases and you can feel the blood move to a place it hasn't been able to course in a long time. It's the feel-good hurt. I remember when my first real boyfriend moved away to go to Duke Law (and also get a Master's in English along the way) and I cried and cried and it felt so good to have loved enough to have it hurt so bad.

My prayer is to let it hurt and let myself cry cry cry. I kept wondering how these Pueblo survivors could keep from crying. I assure you there was no dry eye in the house when the Captain's wife, Rose, accepted his flag and coin for him. Standing ovation as moving as any tribute I have ever witnessed with my own heart. My prayer is to expand my own capacity to let go of these rhythms inside of me which beat to the tune of "alone. alone.alone." I would like that rhythm replaced with the beat of "family. family.family." Because, let's face it, do I really think my time is going to be my own when I have kids? If I think it's a little challenging to figure out when we are stopping for lunch in Stowe, Vermont, how do I think it's going to be when I am lunch to my two nursing twins?