My family gets together and it’s like a pot-luck dinner of words.

Only there’s no dish that looks suspiciously like the untouched food from your high school cafeteria. But since I never went to high school, I can’t really say for certain what that looks like. I have watched movies, though, so I have an idea, anyway.

And each of us seems to bring the best kinds of commodities to the table. Like cadbury eggs at Easter time. And the shake-paw cookies my dear sister-in-law Darby makes once in a great while. Oh, and the chicken corn soup my mom makes when the snow keeps piling outside our windows higher and higher; when the chance of getting to wherever it is you were supposed to go gets less and less likely .

And then we get there.

That place in our conversation where we know the stories so well, we start to laugh even before the punch line. And suddenly it’s like someone almost died in the Bible again, it’s that hilarious. And it’s the stories that chronicle life lived together–stranger than fiction, though they may seem sometimes–that make me feel…undivided or something. Like I don’t need to look around for life anymore; it’s happening right now. All around me. And it turns out it’s not the kind of hard work you sometimes hear about. Turns out it’s more about being present and connecting with the people around you, and all the better when they happen to be family, I guess.

And we listen to the stories about my pop being on some kind of new medication for his migraines and waking my mom up in the middle of the night, convinced that the aliens have finally come. And I pretend to remember the time when a man tried to drag my pop out of our van–punching a hole through the car window after he inadvertently cut him off in traffic. There was my mom, freaking out, praying and crying, while I was in the back of the van along with the rest of the kids. I was too little to know what was happening, but not too little to really enjoy the ice cream cone I was eating.

And I am not sure exactly what has made me think of this tonight, except I did try to mention to my friend that the weekend is supposed to get up to the nineties. Only it came out to sound more like this summer is supposed to get up to the nineties–to which he replied by telling me how next winter might snow.

ha. ha. ha.

Anyway, I look forward to the feel of summer. And that makes me think of evenings that are better lit for more hours; of sitting on our porch and talking with friends and family; of my birthday and probably crying because it’s a lot of pressure to be the center of attention, even if just for a day, while at the same time crying because I love love love hearing my family say what they love about me.

Which is one of our traditions. The birthday person gets a compliment from each person in the family. No repeats. No saying what you don’t like about them, either. Though somebody usually suggests it, anyway, since we happen to know a thing or two about sarcasm around here.

Shocker, I know.

Case in point, I know.

But anyway.

This weekend is supposed to be real, real warm. And that’s how I feel when my family reminisces, I guess. So there you go: the connection.