After a couple of weeks of getting acquainted to the craziness, excitement, stress, and beauty of New York City, I returned to West Chester this past Tuesday for a couple of days with my family to celebrate the Fourth of July holiday. For my whole life, July 4th has been a big deal for my family, and we have the same traditions that we look forward to repeating year after year. It always begins with a trip to upstate New York to visit my grandparents, where we’ll usually catch a baseball game in Binghamton, have a nice breakfast overlooking the vast landscape at grandma and grandpa’s remote house on the hilltop in Oneonta, bounce from store to store in downtown Cooperstown, and finally spend the rest of the afternoon lunching and lounging at the beautiful Glimmerglass Lake. This recipe is always the same, almost methodical, but why change anything when what you’re used to is the best you can imagine?
After spending this time with my dad’s parents, we always continue our trip by traveling to Hamilton, NY, where my aunt, uncle, and cousins live. My other aunt and uncle and my grandma on my mom’s side meet us there, and it instantly becomes our annual family reunion. In Hamilton, there tends to be more fluctuation when it comes to the events of the day. Sometimes we’ll go to the farmers’ market, sometimes to the lake for a swim, and other times we’ll have a fire out in the backyard as the sun sets and the sky moves from its baby blue to murky midnight. However, there are some things that never change – we always have a family poker tournament, family tennis outings for some and golf for others, big cookout dinners, and scenic hikes. Each year guarantees hours of sitting out on the Johnsons’ big front porch, sipping cool drinks and talking about anything and everything until once again the murky midnight is upon us.
This time spent with my family in July is one of those traditions that I look forward to every single year. Often times throughout the year my family and I will reference funny memories, interesting experiences, and inside jokes. We’ll laugh at the song that was sung at the parade six years ago with more gusto each time its mentioned. My brother and I will reminisce on the games that we made up with our cousins years and years ago, like Spiderman baseball and the rockslide game. My cousin, aunt, and I will laugh thinking about the disastrous cakes we have frosted in the past as we continue to improve year by year.
I had just as much fun as ever this year, but I also began to think more than ever about how even though so many things are the same, so many things are also changing. This is natural, I know, and I recognize that some change is definitely good. But I can’t help but feel the nostalgia; sometimes it creeps up gradually, and other times it impacts me at an unexpected and extreme force. When did we play Spiderman baseball for the last time? When did the cousins start drinking wine instead of grape juice? When will it no longer be practical for my immediate family to take a road trip with just us – mom and dad in the front seat, me and Jack in the back?
Life goes on and people grow up. I may be sad thinking about this sometimes, but I do know that with this change comes a lot of new and exciting opportunities. Some of the best days of my life haven’t even happened yet, and who knows what memories and inside jokes will created at the next Fourth of July holiday and the one after that? Who knows what people I will meet and what things I will do in between? I am looking forward to all of the amazing things that are yet to come in my life, but it’s weeks like this that remind me that sometimes it’s okay to look back every once in a while and appreciate all of the moments that have pieced together like a mosaic to make me the person that I am today.
