Godfamilies are good families

24 years ago today, I learned that our dear friend and former college housemate Erica was in labor. I was living in San Francisco and drove over the Golden Gate Bridge. At Marin General, I learned Erica had given birth very recently. So I got to hold Mark and Erica's tiny baby, named Rachel Stella, when she was just a couple of hours new. It was a joyful moment, especially in light of the fact that Mark and Erica later asked me and my husband to be her godparents. They clarified that a catastrophe for them would not result in our becoming her custodial parents – an uncle was already signed up for that role – but would mean we would be in the circle of friends and family who would become her tribe as she came up in the world.

Sadly we moved away from the Bay Area shortly after we accepted this honor, and it's a little harder to be active in someone's upbringing when you're a thousand miles away. But it's been lovely to become acquainted with our goddaughter over the years, and see her sister grow up into herself too. We've hosted them for a couple of ski trips that we'll always remember fondly.

As a kid, I had a lot of people who loved me and looked out for me everywhere I went, maybe because I was enthusiastic and curious most of the time and willing to chat with people a lot of the time. When I was a teenager, my mother realized she hadn't named a godparent and decided her best friend Marcia was the one. Marcia accepted the honor, godmothering me and my sister. That has become a source of love in my circle many times over as my godmom has two beautiful daughters. Now one of the daughters has three kids of her own, and so the circle keeps expanding to admit more.

As an adult, my circle shifted dramatically away from all those people I grew up with at different times in my childhood – people like Vivian and Hari way back at Olompali, and my family's friends Frank and Phee, Diane, George, Bob and Barbara, Marcia, and many others. There was attrition as people died or moved away or joined different circles, and my circle filled in with other people my age, some of whom have remained close to me. My own big moves back and forth between Colorado and California seemed to exacerbate that.

Few of those non-family members know me well today. I loved Judy dearly, and remained friends with her until her very end, but she's been gone for more than four years. I did some of the shifting by moving to California after graduating from high school. At the time I could not fathom staying in Colorado. I knew every nook and cranny of my town and wanted to go elsewhere. I'd never pictured myself staying.

But we have been friends ever since we met our roommate Erica, and she later married our mutual friend Mark. Having been appointed a member of their daughter Rachel's inner circle continues to give me warm feelings. I like knowing I am there not only for my husband and daughter but also for Rachel and her sister as they set out in the world. It feels good to know my godmother and godsisters are there for me, too. And I know my friend whom we chose to be there for our daughter as her godmother will live up to her pledge, no matter what happens between her and me.

We godfamilies are always a place where members our tribe can land. We will always have room for the others. How fortunate we are for these tribes, for loving and being loved by them.

This could be the last time

We spent the weekend camping, only about an hour away but we definitely felt like we got a break from the usual routines. It's good to take those breaks, to go and hang out for a while. To settle in and talk and play and eat and plan and joke around together. I have a friend in a group who has had a tradition of going camping together with others in her group yearly, and my friend is bitterly disappointed that so many of her peers no longer want to camp. I understand her feelings -- I would be sad if I didn't go at least a couple of times a year. (My in-laws really had that one figured out -- they took their kids camping and roadtripping all the time. My father, too, knew of the natural wonders that awaited us in our own backyard; my mother was unfamiliar with the entire notion of family camping as I grew up knowing it.)

Fourth of July Campground kept coming up in conversations over this past weekend, because one of our camping party had just been there a week earlier. The talk about that lovely spot brought back memories of a picnic with my grandmother when I was around 10.

My grandmother had driven to our house from her home in Littleton, a rare event in itself, as we usually trekked to her for Sunday visits and dinners and celebrations. At our house, we loaded up the car with food and drinks and blankets and piled into her massive, white Cadillac Coupe de Ville convertible, the roof down. We laughed and kidded and slid around the curves on the red leatherette bench seats as we went up Boulder Canyon, passed Nederland, and then turned off the Peak-to-Peak Highway.

It was a time when I was realizing there was a lot I liked about being outside. I was warming to Colorado (having grown up in both Colorado and California) and found it a thrill to be up in the mountains with my grandmother, Oma, and my family and aunt and uncles, even if she moved slowly and couldn't walk very far (I remember swollen ankles being a perpetual problem for her). We spread out our picnic blanket in a flat, grassy clearing, and everyone scurried around, helping Oma get comfortable. I remember the greens of the wild grasses, the rosebushes, the quaking aspen leaves, and the scent of the fire my father and brother built from the fallen pine branches and logs we'd gathered.

I don't remember anything substantive about that day: no revelatory conversations, nor secret habits revealed on a hike. I just remember a joyful sense of being in the sun, being in the right place with the right people at the right time.

Just a couple of years later, Oma died in a car accident in Ireland, when my aunt was driving. That might have been the last time, then, that Oma had enjoyed an excursion in the mountains. I missed her this weekend, all over again.