This summer is a busy one—lots of travel, most of it to visit family. I greatly value these visits because I have lived my entire adult life far from my parents and siblings.

Because summer means road trip for so many of us, I’m reposting from A Bible Place about two different “road trips to together.”

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When I was four, my parents decided to move from Detroit, where we lived with my grandmother, to Southern California. I have a brief memory of the day the adults discussed and decided this. Grandma would go with us—my Aunt Beth, her only daughter, was there.

Soon, with my baby brother and all our earthly belongings, we piled into the family’s olive green Kaiser and headed off for the land of opportunity.

The car must not have been in very good shape. Afraid it wouldn’t make the trip, my dad insisted on making as few stops as possible—no sightseeing. I rode in the back, looking out the inch or two of window at my eye level—and spent the first day of the trip throwing up. Grandma kept feeding me Ritz crackers, thinking it would help (it didn’t). Eventually someone suggested I sit in the front seat, which helped a little.

The car kept running. We arrived in California and stayed several months with two sets of relatives, and then my parents bought a house in Anaheim in one of the first orange groves turned subdivision. My brother and I grew up in Anaheim, and our sister was born there.

Eventually my dad’s two brothers and their families moved to California too. We didn’t get together often—usually just Thanksgiving and Christmas and an occasional summer barbeque. But, if you count Southern California as one place, the family was together.

Together—there’s something good about that.

The past two weeks, my husband and I have been in Savannah, staying with our oldest daughter and her family. Our younger daughter and her husband, in nearby Hilton Head for four days, joined us part of that time, and when Jason had to return to work, our daughter stayed here with the rest of us. We’ve spent hours on the beach and celebrated two birthdays. We’ve done lots of cooking and cleaning up. We’ve watched movies and played games. We’ve laughed a lot. We’ve enjoyed our daughters sharing the experience of being pregnant at the same time.

We’ve shared one bathroom.

Normal things.

Yes, there’s something good about together. Even if nothing extraordinary happens. Sometimes just being together is extraordinary enough.

DIANE