Adventure is Out There

I wrote this for all the swesties and exiles (and others) who have become my family at college over the past year.  You're awesome and I love you lots. :)


Life is lived in these moments
these flashes of joy
microcosms that encapsulate the love
and devotion we share
- and we know that we are a family
and will never let go.

Still, sometimes people have to go -
travel far - and in those moments
the lines that bind our family
stretch, and joy
seems a soft and fragile thing - a partial share
of love.

But love
is strong, and as we go
about our lives we share
the full and tender moments
that tell us that life is worth it - the joy
that comes from friends becoming family.

And that is the best family -
the one you choose to live with for love's
sake, for the reward of joy.
Thus we go
about our days, moment by moment
by moment for us to share

And share we do - share
with family
these moments
that make up life and love
these choices to hold on and to let go,
to give other people joy.

It was enough to feel joy
together, to share
time and memories we will never let go
of, to make us a family
that will not forget the love
we had in these beautiful moments.

(I find joy in family
- these good friends - we share love
and go searching for these moments - adventure is out there.)

A Goodbye of Sorts

It's strange, how looking back
annual events become lasts.
Unsuspecting in the middle of things -
a family dinner,
a Christmas celebration -
they become
the last family dinner at Grandma's
The last Christmas with Grandpa micro-managing the decorations
The last time I sat on that old
rocker on the porch listening to stories -
old gossip about people long dead.
In my memory they acquire
a melancholy haze.
Remember when?
Remember?
As a child I never thought I would say goodbye
to these haunts,
to the old basement where cousins
played video games,
dressed up, and
punched lights out.
I never thought the family Christmases would end
or change -
Candy homemade by an aunt
nerf wars in the upstairs bedrooms.
I never thought I would have to say goodbye
to my grandparents
as they slowly deteriorated.
To a child, things are as they always have been
and always will be
But I am no longer a child -
I startle at my reflection
when out of the corner of my eye -
my mother, my grandmother
look back at me.
I have seen more things than I imagined as a child,
met more people,
accomplished much.
I stand on my own two feet now,
no longer needing my mother or father.
I am an adult now
and am suddenly confronted with the thought
that my grandparents will probably never see my children,
their great-grandchildren,
that my grandparents' home will be empty and cold,
the rocker on the porch still and silent.
I am confronted with change I never wanted to see,
the way time keeps slipping away ceaselessly into the past.
I am confronted with lasts.

Taken Summer of 2010 at my grandparent's house