The Silver Lining

I went home this weekend (one month to the day of moving) for my Mom and Dad's 25th wedding anniversary.
The trip was fast and furious (about 48 hours from door to door) but well worth it.
I could write about how much they mean to me, and how good it was to see everyone, but instead I'm just going to list some "snap shot" memories of the party, which I hope will illustrate what I'm trying to get at anyway.

Slow dancing with my G-pa Levell, under the stars, to Willie Nelson's version of "Stardust." We were both singing...
Funny thing about that, G-pa kinda looks like ol' Willie right now, minus the braids, of course. He's got a vagabond hippy thing going on right now, with a necklace of colored wooden beads and a handkerchief bandanna wrapped around his fore heard. I started my relationship with Willie thanks to G-pa.... I was 13, we were road tripping from CO to TX, and every time the wheels started rolling (even after bathroom breaks) he would play on the road again.
I effing hated it.
So that moment, at peace with G-pa and Willie, was perfect.

Watching Mom and Dad re-enact their wedding "get-away" picture in a golf cart with "bride" and "groom" baseball caps. I believe in the original they were in a Model-T, wearing their finest. This time around, mom was wrapped in a white plastic tablecloth, and dad was wearing a sweaty lake shirt. Beautiful! Thank God the light was glistening just right through the trees...

Watching my little cousin Alice, who is as fresh and sweet as a new bag of marshmallows, bopping about in the way 8-year-olds do. She was so witty and smart and sarcastic. We came up with an idea called "cake in lake" in which you eat cake for breakfast, with your hands, and then just jump in the lake to wash up.
Her and I tubed together, which I haven't done in a long time, and I totally screamed way more than she did.
"If you want them to stop, make a motion like you're cutting your head off with your hand," she said.
Oh man!
Later, she and I shared a futon, even though for all intensive purposes we were just getting to know each other again. We made good bed-fellows b/c I like to kick the covers off, and she likes to steal them.Come morning, she was curled into the nook of my torso like a kitten I'd raised from birth.
And to think I was afraid she wouldn't remember me!

I saw my Granny. She told me some pretty gripping stories about her life growing up. She got on a train when she was 17 (from a little town in WY) set for NYC, where she was going to meet her long, lost father... and other such sagas. Not sure how much of it is real, and how much of it is just an exaggerated memory, but none the less... it was great to have "story time" with her again.

I smoked a cigar with my uncles, which was pretty great. I warned them I would probably end up wasting most of it, after the green wave of nausea set in... they were ok with it. We kicked back with those tiny brown Cubans, which reminded me of caterpillars, and exhaled into the night. I was gleefully barfy after 10 minutes of it!

That's a lot to pack into one weekend, and I am certainly feeling the effects of it as I sit here almost nodding off at the computer.
I probably won't be going home again for a while, but those few hours we worth more than their weight in gold.... or should I say silver.