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A short list of things that have not changed in decades and also should remain the same until the heat death of the universe, plus a bonus drawing of one of the prettiest lakes in the world that does it zero justice.
Something I was not able to include was the smell of my grandma’s house. It’s been the exact same forever. Some sort of mixture of cigarette smoke, coffee, some kind of… macaroni and meat cooking on the stove, and dog. When I put it that way it sounds like a bad smell but it actually smells quite nice and cozy and like home. I like it very much.
I also didn’t include my grandma’s raspberry bushes, but I will say that when I brought Kora over, the first thing I did was go harvest a few berries and present them to her as a rite of passage. A little anointing.
Later on my cousin was in the raspberry patch with the kids and she said “Alex I’m sorry I took it from you but I gave Kora her first raspberries from the garden.”
I told her, “Don’t worry, I made sure it was the first thing I did” and then we laughed and both immediately started loping around saying HEeEeERE CHiIiIILD TAKE PART OF GRANDMA’S RASPBERRIES in little goblin voices, because the noteworthy thing here is that the raspberries are NOT a rite of passage, nobody has ever made a big deal of them, and here we both were, being weirdos about it.
I’m not sure I can overstate how important it felt to bring my kid to the place I grew up as a little tiny kid. It’s weird because it didn’t feel all that important until I did it, and while we were there it seemed like she was having the absolute best week of her tiny life, and it felt… really good. I wasn’t sure how it was all going to go… 6 hour drive one way, massive routine disruption, family members I don’t really talk to anymore… but watching her run around in my grandma’s yard with my cousin’s kids felt like looking through a time portal. It just… it just felt good and right and I’m so glad we did it.
It was a really nice trip.
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