Watering Roots in Central Texas
I spent three quarters of my childhood outside of the home state of my parents. But everything is bigger in Texas, including that quarter of my upbringing. This summer my wife, kids, and I left Oregon for a family reunion and quality time with our parents, cousins, nieces and nephews.
Reunions are a welcome reason to travel, even though there’s no beach, theme park, or other typical vacation destination. The purpose is relational, not spatial. As the middle generation, family reunions are an interesting observation point. Your parents and their siblings are retired grandparents, keeping family memories warm. Your cousins all have way too many kids to keep track of, and all of the kids bear traces of your grandparents’ features, in different hues and shapes.
My siblings and I are part of a group of 12 cousins, from the six siblings in my mother’s family. Most of those cousins stayed in Texas. We don’t connect online, so these sporadic summonings are not to be passed up. You can’t help but compare the lives you’ve built in your related but unrelated families. What kind of experience would my kids have if they were born and raised where their relatives live? How thick would their roots grow, and would that hinder or help their branches reach the sky? I’ve been intentional about developing my boys’ roots where we live, and I hope it gives them a solid grounding to build upon.
Old life, new life
Going further back than my family’s history, we visited prehistoric Texas, touring the underground caves discovered when building the interstate, and the mammoth fossils dig site near Waco. Witnessing these reminders of a time long past reminds me that humans and other animals have made homes in this part of the world for a long time. As families grow, they shift, but there’s no need to start fresh when you can build upon your bedrock.
Despite my aversion to shopping trips, I couldn’t escape the magnetism of Magnolia, the Mecca of fixer-upper fans. Their purpose is to build fulfilling lives. And even in the consumerist experience of their theme park trappings, the effect for me is enriching. Refreshing the old to make it new enough to enjoy as a young family is so much richer than constructing another cookie cutter, suburban clone.
State of Mind
Texas has a magnetic push effect on me. I refused to grow roots there. Isn’t that the case with wanderers by nature? We can’t stay put where our parents raised us. But the magnetic pull of relationships is an opposing force. And family flourishes with face time. We’ll spend more time in Texas, inevitably, and I’m grateful my eyes were opened to a deeper history and story. I’m raising my boys in the Pacific Northwest, with intentionality around building strong roots. I recently joined my elementary son on his field trip to release young salmon into the river - quintessential local cultural activity that I hope he remembers. My own international upbringing left me with a global perspective but at the same time, rootless. In raising well rounded children, how do we strike the balance with instilling a home base safety net, without a closed mind?
