The Gathering

For ten years we've met,
the young women of our family
with two crones.
We've committed to each other,
grown closer, become friends,
as have our children,
three generations set the compass for change
in our lives, doing now
what will benefit seven generations hence
and relishing the journey,
our lives spiraled into new constellations.


The women in the photo above (my daughter and nieces together with my sister-in-law and me) just celebrated one decade of gathering together each year, spouses and children welcome, but with time set aside just for us to gather in a circle and re-connect. I wrote about it previously here and here. This year the next generation decided to take over the organizing of the gathering and expand it. They have some wonderful ideas. One decade has ended. The next has begun.

Offered for the G-Man's Friday Flash 55.

So Much has Changed

The windows are open since the temps are warm this September. I'm sitting looking at the verdant hills surrounding me and taking stock of all the has happened since my last post. I guess I needed a break to digest and integrate it. The biggest change is that my Honey and I put our Italian apartment/ condo on the market after nearly five years living here. We plan to move back to the states once it sells and relocate to Jacksonville, FL. The decision bubbled up after our vacation there in July/ August, being with family and having our grands (now 11 and 7 1/2) on our own for two weeks.

The easy reason to point to is the realization that I'm too far away from those who mean the most to me. Add to that the growing surety that Italians, as much as I have felt welcomed by them, enjoyed them and learned important life lessons from them, are not my tribe. I'm ready to volunteer in something I find meaningful and I'd like to have options that fit my skills, my perspectives, and can be expressed and understood without translation, figuratively and literally speaking. I might be able to shape such an endeavor here but it seems more monumental than I'd like at this time in my life. When I think about where I'd like to grow old and die, I know in my heart of hearts it's not here.

Sinking down a level, I want to be where those around me reflect the diversity in my own family. I want my family to feel at home when they visit, feel met and mirrored, feel comfortable. In my immediate family that means more people of color, bi-racial couples and mixed race kids. In my extended family it means more openly, comfortably gay individuals and couples and more complex families with fostered, adopted, blended and special needs kids. More basically, I'd like to be where my extended family can afford to visit. I cherish the diversity in my own family and I want to have that around me day to day.

There's more, I suspect, in the inner restlessness and eagerness to be living differently, more authentically. I, nonetheless, feel surprised by this change. I was going along feeling happy and delighted and then I wasn't. Makes me sad given how much I've loved living here and the good friends I've made. How does this just change from one day to another?

                                            (photo by Grazian Romanelli of our city and its dragon)