Here We Go

And they’re off, like a herd of turtles! We got just down the road and Braeley announces that his ear has been hurting…great. No turning back, “honey, here’s an advil and some decongestant, let me know how it feels in an hour”. An hour later Braeley asks, “Does anyone else hear that high pitched sound?” His congestion is the voice in his head. But the advil is working for now, so we continued on.

My family called nearly 15 times during my drive up. My Dad changed the oil and re-filled all the fluid levels in my car before we left. Mom tried to buy a car for me to drive that has less than 100,000 miles on the odometer. I feel like a teenager on my way to college - so fussed over. Makes me smile. We bought cheese and blackberry candy at Bravo Farms, just like when we came to visit Mike and Vanessa that last time. Cheddar sage and chipotle. We were pioneers, blazing a trail North passing tumble weeds and pecan trees.

The emotion didn’t hit until we saw the signs for Galt. I thought maybe it’d be different this year. After all this isn’t the first time we’ve been back to Pullen’s house since the accident. But every time we return, they are a little more gone. Their smell is gone now too. But the framed picture of Baja California is still in the living room, and the garden has tomatoes and zucchini. The kids’ playhouse is still in the backyard, and the swing set that had the black widow nest. I can only imagine how hard it is for the Pullen family to have to decide the struggle between not wanting the house to sit empty, but not wanting it to change either.

Braeley told me it was kinda sad to be back here at Sydney and Chris’s house. I agree. It makes the loss new again. That stomach dropping out kind of new. A great salve was seeing Sydney and Chris’s cousins, Pearl, Leah and Annie Nevis playing with Bella and Braeley… the same game they used to play in that house ~ “get the boys”. Only this time, Braeley was the only boy. He loved every minute of it. After pizza and pool, and as we drove to Nevis’s newly remodeled ranch house, I asked Braeley, “Are you ok with all of this”. He said, “yeah… but life is full of sadnesses. First one person dies, then another, then another. I don’t want to be sad anymore, Chris wouldn’t want me to.” So I asked, “How is it being the only boy?” He said, “I’m fine Mom! You know, Annie is most like Chris, except she’s on the other team.” Then, in true child form we were onto another subject. Braeley, “when I grow up I am going to have 3 kids. They will be spaced 2 years apart and then 3 years apart. I’m going to teach them to like California. And there will be two boys and then a girl. That way the first boy will be five years older than the girl. And I will go on vacation and you can have them for camp. Wait! When I have kids….I will make Daddy a grandpa!!!! (Laughs) Ha, Ha Dad’s gonna be a grandpa! ”

I woke up at 6:30 this morning at Mike’s sister, Jodi’s house with the lake outside my window. We have great timing as usual, and showed up during their move back to The Ranch. There is something magical about this farming town for us now. Galt, where all your food is grown in your backyard – there’s also dogs, cats, cows, and a lone guinney hen. The gardens are amazing. Jodi has been canning (like Vanessa would have been) and shared cans of apricots, asparagus, and jam with us. I was so touched when she even brought out a can of carrots that Mike canned and a jar of pomegranate jam of Vanessa’s. We stood in Vanessa’s kitchen and ate blackberries by the handful (the girls picked them from their yard just that morning), and pizza. While we ate, we watched the screensaver on Mike and Vanessa’s computer filter through pictures of our last Breanna trip to Mexico. There were pictures I’ve never seen of Vanessa and I sitting on the sand looking for shells and planning our year of home school/travel together. What was then a dream, is now, in part, a reality. This year is bittersweet, (as is so much now), we commemorate the Pullens not by mourning statically buy by living out some of their adventures for them. I hope they would have done the same for us.

They kids are up now too, so it’s time to go make some memories.

TTFN

Rhonda