We all cried after Greg got on a plane and flew home to DC. We still miss the love, joy and comfort we get from his company and a longing for home began in each of us with his departure.
Luckily my mom was the next traveler to join us. Gramma is always missed when she is not near. For the first two years of Ryan’s life she spent most of her time living a few blocks from us in DC. A year later we are still adjusting to not having her present in our daily lives. So when we picked her up from the Salt Lake City airport we all rejoiced and slipped into familiar patterns.
We immediately set off toward Moab, UT. When we stopped for coffee my mom forgot her purse, my second parent to forget something important soon after joining our band of traveling chaos. Luckily we were able to retrieve her belongings with the only cost being a couple additional hours of driving. That day we saw sunset at a rest stop and set-up our tent in the dark. We experienced a windstorm in the middle of the night and in the morning we were gone from camp as quickly as the storm had passed through. With the sun beating down already, we debated about stopping at Arches National Park but luckily ventured in for some breathtaking sights and a good rock scramble with the kids.
That day we left the dry desert heat and climbed the Rocky Mountains. The temperatures dropped 30 degrees and our surroundings shifted to peaks, pines and rivers. I learned how hard it is for my little car to have any speed when loaded to the gills and facing toward the sky. And I could feel a calmness sweep over my mom as sites reminded her of Snoqualmie Pass. A place she lived and fell in love with as a young adult. A place that still holds her heart even though she's lived in Rhode Island for the last 40 years.
My mom and dad moved from the mountains of Washington state to Rhode Island in the hopes of raising children near family, but over the next decade their relationship fell apart and the rest of my family headed West. My grandmother moved to Seattle when I was 8 and my single-mother raised us without any community or family close-by.
I grew-up in a small, quaint, New England town in Rhode Island where I always felt out of place. Our small town was as white as it gets and is the kind of place where my friend got death threats for being gay and my brother was told to dropout of school because he was having trouble. It is a place that constantly sent us messages that we don't belong, yet it is the place I was raised and the connection there is unshakable.
Our pass through the mountains was too short, but waiting on the other side were good friends we made growing up or raising kids in Rhode Island. We arrived in Denver and spent the night with a friend of mine from middle school. Graham and I had not spoken in at least 15 years, but the ease and comfort we felt made the years melt away. We stayed up late talking. We talked about politics. Pablo and Graham had moved from Providence a year prior. We talked about their new and old communities, about Providence which they both loved and about the town where Graham and I were both raised. It was so good to connect with someone who comes from the same place, has traveled a different path, but holds a lot of my same values. It was comforting to be with an old friend and meet his partner and be welcomed into his current life.
The comfort of old friendships deepened the next day when we traveled an hour south and were embraced by Bonnie Ulm. Bonnie and my mom are dear friends. They both are strong women who each single-handedly raised three children. My older brother and her oldest son were close friends in elementary and middle school and the two mother's bonded then. Bonnie was a school teacher and we talked at length about how the school system, other than a few great teachers, was set-up to exclude us, especially those of us who have learning differences. A story too common in our public schools and one that dramatically shapes my perspective of my hometown.
With Bonnie, we all found an ease and love that was good for the soul. Annabelle and Ryan quickly disappeared into pretend play together, delighting in the space to be children, asking for little because they knew all of their needs could easily be met. I rested in ways that my mother always longs for me to do, but as a single-grandparent, I usually worry I will overburden her if I relax so fully. My children started referring to my mom and Bonnie as the grandmothers and I felt my mom's love amplified. Upon arriving, I immediately napped for hours, took a long and luxurious bath, was fed and cleaned up after, finally tended to work emails and organized my belongings. The gift of this stop is still paying dividends as we pass another week away from home and the children's father.
When we left Bonnie’s we also ended the time with my mother. Now that time traveling with Dad and Gramma are over, I feel parenting responsibilities more keenly and know that my children miss them both. While they are incredible travelers, they are beginning to grow weary of the new and unfamiliar.
Luckily, a good friend with fresh energy joined us for the next section East. We picked Kata up from the Denver airport and drove north an hour to spend a couple nights with a mutual friend, who used to live in DC. Jonas secured enough bike trailers and bikes for us all, so we spent the next day on a kid-friendly bike-tour around Fort Collins, stopping to play at the park and then again to eat ice cream. That night another mutual friend Nadia, who is living near there now, but we originally know through Greg’s college outing club, joined us at Jonas & Pete’s. I was also hoping to see a good childhood friend of my younger brother’s, but timing did not allow us to do it all. I was struck by how many old-ties I have to different people in Colorado, a state where I had never previously stepped foot.
The next day Kata, Annabelle, Ryan and I piled in the car and began our journey East, beginning yet another chapter on our journey through this vast country.