art is emotional.




Nan and Papa in front of their soon-to-be home.

 

Friday afternoon I cut out of work early and drove the five hours Northeast to my grandparent's house, because even at twenty five, when given the option of this or nearly anything else, I'll still choose a visit to grandmother's.

We've always been close, although there have been times where a lag between us speaking grows too long and uncomfortable and requires repair.  Still, we reach out to each other to bridge the gap. Because we're family, and we have to, yes, but also because we choose each other.

When, a few years ago, they sold the lake cottage where I spent all of my childhood summers getting sunburned and running wild, I was sure I could never forgive them; I cried myself to sleep for months mourning the place that held so many of my happiest memories. Yet there I was on the day they moved into their new home, helping carry boxes down the perilous stairs and holding a hand for morale and support.

They mean so much that even the fleeting thought of them one day being taken away from me brings involuntary tears to my eyes before I squelch it and move on with my day. A reaction too powerful to really ignore despite the refusal of my stubborn mind to acknowledge the thought.

This weekend, we had a great visit. We dined and cocktailed and chatted and heart-to-hearted. It was everything I needed it to be and it always is. I didn't want to leave, but then again, I've never wanted to leave. They're my biggest fans, so interested in everything I have to say, I feel like a celebrity in their midst. They're equally as fascinating to me. I've grown fixated on asking any question that pops into my mind, determined to learn as much of them and their lives as I can. I attempt to memorize everything so that nothing will ever be lost, no matter the way time and change try to erase things.

After dinner on Friday night we wandered the eclectic downtown area of Ann Arbor, on our way to the ice cream shop as has become our tradition. They're spoiling me, but I think secretly they're partly glad for my visits as a way to excuse generous ice cream consumption. Either way, we're all winning.

We were chatting as we passed a frame shop and I mentioned a map I bought several years ago of the lake that fed my childhood, and how I'd been meaning to have it framed, but it keeps getting lost in the shuffle of life.  Try as I might not to, I always end up bring up the lake when we're together, pushing the tender place we all have on our hearts. What happened next was odd, and heartwrenching.

My papa looked down at my nan and they had a short conversation as if I wasn't even there, and then seamlessly incorporated me back in.

Papa: Nance, I think Sara should get the painting of the cottage, she's always been the one that loved it the most.

Nan: Yes, that sounds right.

Papa: How does that sound, Sara?

Me: I love the painting, of course I'd love to have it. But that's so far away, I've never even thought of it.

Papa: Well it won't be for a while, we're hanging it in the new house. We've still got some life left in us. Just, you know, when the time comes.

Me: I can't really think about that without crying.

Papa: Well, okay. Enough then.

As I am literally choking back tears. I'm just not ready for them to start divvying up their things.

The painting in question is one they had commissioned several years ago, of the cottage and my Nan's garden there in peak form, a reminder they had created for when they were spending winter or fall in their homes in Florida or Ohio.

It's a large picture and it hangs over the fireplace of their sole remaining home in a suburb of Ann Arbor, which they're now selling to move into a smaller home in a retirement community this summer, a fact that equally breaks my heart and infuriates me. I can't stand to think of them getting older and older until they'll eventually leave me.

I just can't even consider it.

They're downsizing for the move to their new, considerably smaller house, and things are being sold and claimed by my dad and his brothers. They're purging their things, and I can't help but think it one of the saddest things a person will ever do in their lives. After a lifetime of continuously, and often accidentally, accumulating all the stuff that makes a life, getting rid of it, putting it into younger hands. Letting things go.

While I'm thrilled at the prospect of having the beautiful painting, a reminder of my favorite place and of my favorite people hanging in my own home someday, I genuinely hope the day never, ever comes when it actually becomes mine.

It was an emotional weekend.

my happiest place.

time for a photo dump. you're welcome.

I'm wounded. And by wounded I mean branded, because at 25 my friends and I STILL apparently think that's a good idea after like three glasses of wine.

Here is Easter Mass with my family. My dad insisted on holding the baby. Lucky I was seated right next to him, so I was blissfilly occupied tickling feet and holding hands with Florence. My parents are cute.

My brothers are also really into Florence, even when she's sleeping. It's really adorable.



I made Matt hold the baby since she was changing hands like a hot potato. He is particularly nervous about 'the transition,' but once the baby is safely transferred into his arms, he's a natural.



Pre-branding. Just an innocent night with the gals. Before it turned into an after school special/Smokey the Bear public service anouncement.

My parents are in Hawaii this week, so I'm watching the dog. He's clearly distraught over their absense.

I would have put like 200 more pictures of Florence in this post because she's my neice, so she's automatically the cutest baby ever born, but I'll spare you for now.

See, here we are hanging out. GIRL TIME.

I bought her those choice shades. She's already so fashion forward.

Matt bought me a gun recently because he knows me well. Soon after, we went to test her out and it was thrilling. I can't believe I've lived all this time without a rifle.



This is from Florence's first photoshoot. She was three days old. She's so much more photogenic than I am. I think she gets her strong interest in feminism from me and her mom. Buckle up, little one. This lovely snapshot is thanks to this talented lady: source



fickle march, fickle me

maybe i need to stop taking emo pics and actually work through my emotions. nahhhh.

The other morning on my way to work I sat through an entire red light without realizing my right turn signal was blinkblinkblinking away. I was going straight. I flipped it off as I accelerated through the light and looked around sheepishly at the other cars to see if anyone was pissed and/or making obscene gestures at me. Guess everyone was feeling pretty tame that morning because I didn't get a single side-eye. Maybe they thought it was a late April Fools joke. A cheap leftover.

 

I guess I lost myself there for a second in contemplating what a good month March was to me this year. To tell the truth, I've never really had any real affinity toward Spring. I get it, I get it. Rebirth, life, emerging on the other side of Winter. It's all well and good to see green again and to not feel like my fingers and ears are going to fall off every time I step outside, but really, I'm in it for Summer. Spring is just another thing to endure before blistering heat, minimal clothing, and the promise of campfires and sunshine and reading while partially submerged in water.

 

Spring is fickle. It changes its mind too often, threatens to give my psyche whiplash. It's soggy and tumultuous, despite the hardy daffodils and magnolias that quickly remind us of all to come and then fade until next year.They're a treat, but they're not made to last.  No wonder Picses are the way that they are, they kick off Spring. Anyone born at the start of such a finicky season is bound to brood. And yet, I'm attracted to the depth and the endless rollercoaster ride that the Picses in my life take me on. As I've mentioned probably a hundred times, I'm a summer soul through and through.  I usually have no use for finicky March. For the battle of rain and sun, warm and cold.  Why should I? I know who is going to win out, let's get on with the next.

 

I sometimes feel like my entire life is a series of waiting to get on with the next.

 

I don't know, I mean, I make as much effort as the next guy to really be present in the moment and enjoy where I am, but the fact of the matter is that I'm like a half-starved animal- I'm always reaching, stretching, grasping, struggling for more. Just a little further. Just a little tiny bit more. Just just just just.

 

 

Just slow down, Sara.

 

Let's consider real life for a moment.

 

Have I mentioned recently that I'm moving to Montana in a few short months? Yeah. That's happening. In my mind I'm so overwhelmed by the fact that I'm going to pacify this internal pull to run to the mountains that I don't even know where to start here. What can I do but wait until it's finally time?

 

I know this thinking isn't productive. It doesn't encourage lists or tying up loose ends or force me to grapple with leaving the life I've forged here. It's so confusing that I don't feel joy or sadness or anything really. Just the knowledge that I'm going, the impatience that I'm not there yet, and the dull sinking feeling that comes with knowing that there is so much to do before I depart. But I feel sort of stuck, like there's nothing I can do right in this exact moment in time, and that frustration feels raw and itchy. It's a rash I wear constantly. It's distracting and demanding. It takes so much effort and will power to keep it at bay.

 

And this is the line I dream of:

 

"Let there be rock and roll on the dashboard rado; let there be occasional hands bongoing on the dashboard. Let that white line in the middle of the far west two-lane highway come feeding into the screen..." -Jack Kerouac

 

My soul is so far away from my body and right now I feel ugently that, for once, it is crucial that my soul and body inhabit the same plane.

 

And yet March was wonderful and wild. I planted bulbs and pulled weeds and watched little green tongues poke through the soil, so hungry for sunlight. I welcomed a member of my family and watched my sister become a mother, a role she falls into so naturally that I'm once again shocked that we can at the same time be so alike and so differerent. I got accepted into school and decided on a new life path. I had serious conversations with Matt about our future, read many delightful books, saw one of my favorite bands in concert, and painted some beautiful pictures. I started running again and told my boss that I'm gone by summer's end and cheered my alma mater all the way to the final four. I celebrated the birthdays of my sister and brother and got a sun tan on my face and arms from a week straight of 80 degree days.

 

March was full, you guys.

 

Full of good.

 

It deserved to be treasured and polished for memory.

 

So why do I feel so distracted by something I can't pull out of my periphery? It's right there, but I can't catch it staring straight on.

florence.

I have a niece now.

 

 

And she's beautiful and perfect and my sister doing great as well. Florence, my niece, weighed almost ten pounds, so if you think about it, my sister accomplished a pretty impressive feat in growing and delivering such a pudgy little bundle of life. We all love her, which is a given, and we all want to hold and talk to her practically every waking moment. So basically, baby Florence is a hot commodity.

 

They're due to be able to go home tonight, and I think everyone is really ready for that.

 

I'll probably be darkening my sister's doorstep frequently enough that I just miss the 'worn out my welcome' mark until I make my departure for the west.

 

Family will be swarming in the next few weeks like paparazzi to catch a glimpse of our newest addition, which will be equal parts lovely and overwhelming for the new family of three, I'm sure.

 

But you know, in my constantly clicking, worrying, fretting, half-crazy mind, this all has been a best-case-scenario situation.

 

Welcome baby Florence, I know you'll bring with you the prosperity your name promises. 

Love, Aunt Sara

abundance.

When I think of my sister and I, it's always us as children and it's always stained in shades of turquoise and sun-bleached blond. Us in sandy bathing suits with chubby red thighs. We're always damp with lake water or covered in crumbs from sandwiches on the deck. We're always in the peak of summer and we're always at the lake cottage. I think of us with rope marks from the hammock imprinted on the backs of our legs and arms, with flour gone awry on our faces as we stand on stepping stools so that we can see the cookies we're making with our Nan on the counter top, or searching for petosky stones in the clear shallow water.

 

When I think of my sister and I, we're practically babies, alabama wild women with hair flying artfully astray and butterfly nets in tow. We are never wearing shoes. We are drinking ginger-ale out of rocks glasses while the adults, freshly changed and combed to perfection, sit down for cocktail hour together out on the porch at five o'clock. We're making giant nests out of pine needles. We're collecting berries on the long gravel driveway, covered in shade.

 

If we're getting along at all, we're always at the lake.

 

I was kind of a bitch to my sister when we were kids and my family likes to remind me of this constantly, but my own memory has sort of edited all of that out. I mean, who wants to remember themselves as a bully when I was always also equal parts precocious and adventure-starved?

 

She was always my baby sister, equal parts partner and ball-and-chain. That's what I remember.

 

I've spent somewhere around the past nine months watching my sister do something I've never done, grow a baby. She is my only sister and this will be the first baby to come from the team of four that my parents reared. It changes everything. It changes nothing. We're a family. We grow. We care for each other. There is no other way but to consume and apply each new development as we evolve and expand, push out the edges just a little further to find that there was always plenty of room for more. To find that it was never a question of needing to stretch to grow, but rather unrolling the magic carpet we're flying on a little bit more. There's always so much more love than we ever knew held in the reserves, waiting to be implemented.

 

Still, it's hard for me to think about us being grown enough to have children of our own. We're old enough to be in charge of something so important now. That fact is terrifying when I remember us as practically babies so easily, I can conjure a vivid memory with minimal effort. It's so good back there, so little needed to be repressed. Of course I can call upon it for comfort when I need it.  And it's easy to find comfort in the fact that we are the product of happy childhoods. We felt love and encouragement in abundance.

 

 

Abundance.

 

 

I always think of that word when I think of my childhood. I love that word because it signifies some sort of more-than-enough, it whispers 'above and beyond' without feeling too braggy and in-your-face. Sure, it's a little pretentious, but it turns out I'm a bit of a snob when it comes to childhood, so be it. It's not about money because we were certainly not rich. Maybe it's about safety, or plenty of laughter, or eating a balanced diet. Maybe it's about rules and boundaries or the kisses-per-scraped-knee ratio. Whatever it is, it's all I know.

 

I guess I could mention that today is the day that my sister will actually have her first child, and I'm tripping out over the excitement of it. Seeing the preparation that goes into introducing a new human into the world and family unit has been eye-opening, and frankly, exhausting. I can only imagine the feat that growing one inside your body actually is. My sister has made it look easy, as she does with most tasks that she dives into head first. She is decisive, rarely squeamish, and self assured in her decisions. She was a ballerina for most of her childhood and maybe that instilled a sort of grace of spirit that she retains in even her smallest actions. She grows constantly and stubbornly, like one of the wildflowers we'd pluck out of sandy soil and stick haphazardly in our hair.

 

Although I relish in change and chase unsure paths, I do so in an almost constant state of near-panic and neurotocism. I approach every situation steeled for catastrophe while my sister floats through still and stormy sea with the same quiet, calm determination no matter how high the stakes.

 

She will be a good mother, there's absolutely no doubt in that.

 

I can't help it though, the way that I am. The way I need to worry myself with logistics and trivial details until I'm far enough away from the situation that I can process everything that has happened. I can't help but feel like something is somehow out of my hands and then work myself into a frenzy about it until there is, quite literally, a healthy baby in my hands and I can from there formulate a course of action. Even if that is just to stick my finger in a tiny palm for them to grasp onto. No one has told me where and stand and what to say for this one.

 

I can't help but work with what I know. What I know was a happy childhood. What I know is love that is loud and messy and sometimes allow to run a bit wild. What I know is abundance.

 

What I do not know is this title "Aunt." What to do with it. What the duties being passed to me will entail exactly.

 

Maybe the best I can hope for is to pass on what I know.

family tradition.

My family has many very weird and borderline awkward traditions that, at this point, are absolutely crucial to life running smoothly. Like, some people having very specific coffee cups. And our parents always deliver really bad news in sketchy McDonald's. It's like "Count your blessings, at least your life isn't as bad as most of the other patrons here." Tactical strategy. Although now the golden arches kind of set me into panic sweats. Except when the fries are really hot, because DAMN, are they delicious.

In my opinion these family quirks are really the most pronounced during this, the most wonderful time of the year. Honestly, I wouldn't trade our weird and zany for caroling, trips to Steamboat or all the peppermint ice cream in the world.

Okay, maybe the ski trip, but since none are being offered that's not a decision I'll be forced to make. Unfortunately. Thankfully.

Whatever. So last Saturday we partook in my FAVORITE family Christmas tradition, the procuring of The Tree. This year Matt and Angelo, my sister's new husband, joined us for the first time. My dad gets all Clark Griswald up in the tree farm's biz, my mom makes copious amount of cocoa, and my brothers strive to every year choose a larger, more challenging tree to cart home. Heartwarming.

That's right, we rolled in a three vehicle caravan to murder us some Christmas trees.

Ok, murder probably isn't the right word. It's honest to god a pretty heartwarming tradition that I get schoolgirl gleeful about, but I do sort of have a guilt complex about chopping down trees for sport, only to discard them like three weeks later like garbage.

Que sera sera.


yes. a trailer is required. this is about to get REAL.



Just know I feel guilty about what you're about to see.

But not guilty enough to stop doing it once a year. For the duration.

Okay cool.

Also, nothing is in order. I tried, and then I got frustrated and gave up. Sue me.

the brothers decided on this tree early, but we still walked around the entire farm three times.



matt murdering preparing our tree to ride home with us.




this is just sad. that tree was probably older than I am.



matt and I dragging our tree to the car. a true bonding experience.

yep. that's in my parent's home now.



victory was ours.



wandering through fields of pine and chopping down trees can be exhausting.



i promse we didn't let him ride all the way home in the trailer. although my parents have grown a little lax when it comes to safety, in my opinon.



hot cocoa from the kitchen of mama drake.



newlyweds. they must still be in honeymoon phase because they didn't argue about which tree they wanted NEARLY as much as matt and me.



he's probably trying to see the top of the tree my dad and brothers are about to chop down. it was that tall.

 


my mom assisting on the carry on account of my sister being in the family way and all.

 

we found one that we thought was prickly enough to deter our dog monster.



we love each other sometimes.



yeah mom and dad, this 16 footer is totally the one.



moms and pops debating about whether or not this tree will actually fit in the foyer.



guys doing manly things.




the ten year old gets some saw action.



sis and brother in law christening their first tree.



errrrrrrbody getting in on this one.

nice clean cut matt, no one would know you've had fake trees your whole life.



the bounty has been secured. my dad looks a bit smug about it if you ask me.



too bad there's no shots of my climbing on top of my car to secure our tree. it stayed on... pretty well.

 



being the artist I was born to be.

  

hally already chewed the outlet plug-in off of the light cord. Merry Christmas.

spotted at my sister's wedding.

Not that anyone really cares to see pictures of my sister's wedding, but looking through the pictures let's me relive the madness, so get over it. It was an epic night. Also these pictures are not in order whatsoever, so you won't be living it in sequence. Get ready for a wild ride. Kind of.

Father daughter dance. Also note the cake being dismatled in the backgrgound. yummmmmmmm.

we're sisters, but honestly, she got the better nose. bitch.

ice sculptures and flowers. my wedding is destined to look poor and sad after this no matter what. that's why i plan to elope.

these buddies popped up everywhere throughout the weekend. this was as everyone exited the church after the ceremony. the one with the big guitar thingy was a FLIRT.



my friendsssss.



they're married and no one locked up their knees and passed out during the mass! that was a legitimate concern of mine.



ice bar. it was a popular spot during the reception.



pretty tables.

dance partyyyyyyyy.

Yes, it was a good night indeed.