treasure: families

i am a lucky enough girl to have plenty of families. there are the families we are born into, and the families we make for ourselves. i've spent the past 6 weeks immersed in family.  'tis the season for family, Christmas and New Years', and man oh man did we win at it.

i hereby provide exhibit a: photographic evidence.

 

 

Thanks to Karin, Mitch & Mark for borrowed photography

exhibit b: stories and contemplation

it was just the right amount of fun and downtime, and my love for all these people only grew in the time i was lucky enough to spend with them. it was the first time in probably 2 years that me and the whistler gang had all been together, looking each other in the eye instead of over Skype, or on Facebook and Instagram. i think the main thing i noticed was just how much we appreciated each other, and just how much of a family we were.

when you're in whistler, you're in the thick of things- part of what i loved about that was you tend to live in the 'right now' of your life, without too much thought past the next payday. it's a kind of freedom you don't tend to get for a long time in your life, and should be whole-heartedly enjoyed. what i never did a lot of at the time was to appreciate what long-lasting friendships i was setting up with every potluck dinner, every day on the mountain, every night out dancing at Bill's, every moment dressed up in costume. this is the stuff true love is made of; people who are on your wavelength, who agree with you (and disagree with you too), who laugh with you and commiserate with you and fill your days up with company.

when you leave whistler, and go your separate ways, you suddenly realise how lovely that all was, with the pang of retrospective contemplation and a realisation that Other People (people that haven't been to whis) do not think it's ok to have a double caesar for breakfast on your days off.

meeting up again 2 years later for the wedding of kate and phill was just a wonderful choice. it made me realise how we have all grown and changed, but miraculously we're all still awesome in slightly different ways. the world outside of whistler has been bearing down on us and we've all risen to the challenge. we're all proud of each other the way family is, and fiercely so. we all partied and wore the shit out of our dragon onesies (an awesome purchase and another wonderful choice), drank double caesars for breakfast and ate eggs benny, a Karin Rofors speciality. we re-lived some of the best bits of whistler, but it was really about us being together. and together we were. in cars, on beaches, in planes and on trains, in houses, in tents, in hammocks, on decks, in marquees, on dance floors, in limousines, in vans, in tow trucks, in beds, in cabins, on SkyDeck, on Facebook and Instagram.

we were everywhere in our togetherness.

now, we are apart again. it's a little bit sad, but truthfully the together part was so much fun and so powerful in its ability to make me feel both grounded and filled with helium excitement that i can't feel too sad for too long.

i think life is about the people you miss as a flipside of togetherness. there are always people to miss - it's the life of a traveller, and we all love to travel. it's the people that you meet that make you who you are, and these people are all parts of me, in their sticky happy fizzy ways.

sending you love, dragon and non-dragon friends. all of the love.

do you even know how much i love you?