Making time for what matters

My kids and I spent the weekend in Colorado visiting my family, who were all gathered to celebrate my Grandma turning 98. Ninety-eight! Most of my family still lives in Colorado, and I’m the lone sibling out of 5 of us that lives a plane ride away (I live in Portland, OR).

Here we all are:

I’m the oldest, and the shortest (I’m on the left there). My youngest sister, Bizzy, is the pregnant one – she’s 10 years younger than me. My brother Marc is gigantic – 6’5”. Next to him is my sister Britt, who has 4 kids (!). Jill, on the right, is 2 years younger than me, and hosted the party for my Grandma. They’re all awesome, and I’m super lucky. I love when I get to spend time with them.

Between the 5 of us, we have all these people (two of them are mine):

These are almost all of my grandma’s great-grandkids. There are 3 others who weren’t there and Bizzy’s babe who is about to be born. So many kids!

My sister-in-law texted me last month to make sure we weren’t planning on coming to the party, and I agreed that yep, that’s right, we won’t be there. And then I stopped for a minute. I wondered why my immediate response was to say no, without actually even thinking about it, or looking at the calendar, or stopping for a moment to wonder how I might feel if I missed it, or how my grandma would feel if we were/weren’t there.

And it occurred to me that these are the important moments that I might want to choose to prioritize. My grandma just turned 98. That’s pretty dang old. How many more birthdays will she realistically have?

I had a bunch of reasons why it wasn’t practical for us to go – it’s expensive, kids missing school, a doctor’s appointment that would be a pain to reschedule, work obligations and live Zoom calls for my online classes that constrained the trip, inconvenient flight times….. you know, the usual.

My word for the year is SPACE, and it’s pretty cool seeing all the ways I can live into this word in all different parts of my life – I want to give myself more space to prioritize the things that actually matter in my life, and one of those things is my family. And so, I booked a flight. My kids missed one day of school. We had to get up super early at 4am to leave on Friday, and we didn’t get home until 9:45pm on Sunday, but we had the best 3 days! It was so worth the trip. Not only did I get to see my grandma, my siblings, and my nieces and nephews, but I also got to see my mom, my aunt who lives in England, and my uncle, aunt, and cousins from Maryland who I haven’t seen in 5 years. My kids got to hang with their cousins. My kids will have memories of spending time with their great-grandma. Not everybody gets that, and it’s pretty dang cool.

I’m so glad I chose to pause and to make a different decision. I’m so glad I didn’t miss this, and I can’t wait to keep leaning into what matters and away from what doesn’t.

xo
jess