Visiting with Family

After Paul and I emerged from the Boundary Waters we spent the next two weeks visiting with family in Chicago, St. Louis, and Texas. Family is so important, yet it can be such a difficult reality. While the time in the Boundary Waters was a physically taxing time as we pushed our bodies to their limits in canoing and portaging, the time with family was an emotionally taxing time. Our families of origin are something we do not get to choose, yet they are one of the primary shapers and molders of our personalities and our reality and stay with us our entire lives long. We are always in relationship to them, whether that is a good, strong relationship or a bad, weak relationship, we are always connected to them by virtue of our birth and our early time spent in their presence. We really cannot even choose not to be in relationship with them, for even then, they are still our family, even if we have no contact. We are able, many of us, to choose another family to participate in, through marriage, or through the choice of friends who become like family. But even then we are still always part of our family of origin. It is like holding dual citizenship in two countries. The time Paul and I spent with family these past two weeks was important time. We reconnected and strengthened many of our family relationships and we learned some things about ourselves and our places in those families. Now we are back home, Paul in Brevard County with his mother, beginning to enjoy his "new" car (new to him, but a hand me down from his Aunt in Alabama) and I in Miami, preparing for the next leg of this adventure, my travel to Argentina. Again, we are reconnecting with family, which we had left behind on our three week trip. A very important step, before I leave them again, for 2-3 months.