I traveled 442 miles round trip to have dinner with 75% of my kids Monday night and it was worth each of the 482 minutes I spent on highway 10.
I’m not really a numbers person anyway.
I am a person who loves glorious summer evenings, and smorgasbords of wood-fired pizza, and sweet bites of sour cherry pie, and Benny.
I also really, really love my family.
How lucky was I to enjoy all of that on an ordinary Monday night?
I’ve always been a little greedy about time with my family, equally excited for my children when they passed their driver’s tests and nostalgic for those heady days when they bartered for transportation with happy (trapped-by-a-seatbelt) conversation.
So, when I heard a family dinner was developing at our favorite AirAnB, I arranged a few things and headed right on over. (Many thanks to my husband Vince for holding down the fort back home).
We gathered around a beautiful outdoor table set with wild flowers and crowded with love and anticipation. Charlie and Tara, whose wedding we get to celebrate in August, Facetimed us from their home in New Jersey and Vince checked in too. “Is everyone safe? Are you in for the night? Did you remember your toothbrush?”
A few of that crew are headed our way for the weekend so we’ll have an excellent opportunity to warm up our family gathering chops again in the coming days.
In the meantime, my belly and my heart are full.
