The Stuff of Life (part 1 of 2)

After my dad died, my family gathered on the Washington Coast to spread his ashes.
We only had general ideas so we drove around to feel out the right location.

Too marshy at this spot. Only my brother and my dad's wife even got out of the car here.

* * * 

Growing up, we joked that I must belong to a different family.

My family was always late. I have many memories of waiting until it was a reasonable time to leave for school.

So when I could, I'd latch onto the other family, living next door.

Which was great, because my family was on a completely different schedule.

When we took a family road trip to Montana for my great grandmother's birthday, I spent about half the trip  riding with my cousins because they were traveling on a timetable. 

My family wanted to stop and check out ghost towns, have picnics, experience the countryside. 

There is a whole subset of family vacation photos taken while I was traveling with my cousins

 I wanted to leave on time, I didn't want to lollygag.

At Halloween, we couldn't ever buy costumes.

My dad always designed our homemade costumes.  

I wanted things tidy, inconspicuous and normal. 

I wanted to live in a suburb, eat at McDonald's in 15 minutes and have parents that watched 'Happy Days'.

My parents, and in particular my dad, had strong ideas about how we were going to live: we were building our own houses, living communally with another family in a rural, conservative town, we were weird and didn't even have a TV for four years.

My parents were preventing me from Living My Best Life....

--- to be continued...