This past weekend I flew to Trail in the West Kootenays. I grew up there, started my married life there and had both my children there. It’s where I’m from, what I say when people ask. All my siblings made the trip; my brother driving from Calgary and my younger sister driving from Revelstoke. We gathered at my  older sister’s house, where she lives with her husband, some cats and horses,  a dog and my mom.

They live up on the mountainside outside Fruitvale. The house started out as a modest log cabin but has grown over the years into an fabulous home. Mom has a suite in the above ground basement. We visit her briefly down there but we always end up in the kitchen around the table. Sometimes we move into the comfortable living room. Summers are always beautiful in the Kootenays, so we eat outside at the stone table and then afterwards we sit in the camping chairs around the outside fireplace. 

Coming “home” is always wonderful. No matter how long it has been since we last talked (or messaged in this day and age of readily accessible technology) we fall into easy and enjoyable conversation. We reminince, sharing our often varied recollections of events from our shared past. We catch up on what has been happening in our lives, expanding on our Facebook postings, phone calls or texts. We are all over 50, so imagined slights or grievances have long been laid to rest or are now used as humorous fodder for our teasings. My older sister is an accomplished cook and baker so we eat well, and often. Laughter abounds and familial ties are strengthened over glasses of wine and cups of tea.

The visits are always over too quickly. We all have lives that take us in different directions;  to jobs, to children, to our own separate homes. As much as we love going there to visit, we also love going home. That’s kind of amazing. We go home to Fruitvale, then we go home to Calgary, Revelstoke, Port Coquitlam, wherever. We feel the pull as the weekend draws to a close. Texts come more frequently; when do you expect to get home, when should I pick you up, what do you want for dinner when you get here? Our lives, put on hold for just a while, come back to the fore. 

That doesn’t make the visits any less meaningful. Quite the contrary, actually. It is amazing that given our busy lives we still make the time to reconnect to our first family, the family we grew up in, the family that set the stage for the people we are today. We may not see each other every year, we may not talk or text for a couple of months, but I feel close to my siblings and mom. That connection is always there. Having said that, I knew we all feel the pull back to our spouses, or children, to our jobs and responsibilities. Because that is what a family is supposed to do; prepare us for the world and then send us out into it, while providing a safe place to come back to now and then. 

So, this weekend, I flew home, both ways.