Published: July 27, 2009 03:38 pm         

At Yosemite, a family reconnects with past

By Sharon Randall



Home means different things to each of us. To some, it’s a state; to others, it’s a state of mind.

For me, it’s like a jigsaw puzzle with ever-changing pieces that I keep fitting together to feel whole.

When my children were growing up, we spent a week every summer camping in Yosemite National Park. To get a campsite on the river, their dad would book the reservation as early as possible, a year and a day in advance. The summer after he died, the kids and I camped on the reservation he had made for us.

That was 11 summers ago. We meant to go back, talked about it often, but somehow never managed to pull it off.

I don’t know how it works in your family. In mine, trying to coordinate plans for me, my husband, his two boys, my three grown children and all their others is like trying to ride herd on a bunch of greased snakes. But 11 years is a lot of missed memories.

Finally, last week we went back to Yosemite, thanks to my youngest and his wife, who were determined, bless them, to see it happen. Five of us made it to camp once again on the Merced River surrounded by Glacier Point, Half Dome, Yosemite Falls and thousands of other campers.

We stayed up late watching the moon rise over Half Dome. I wish you could’ve seen it. It was a sight I’ll not soon forget — both the face in the moon and the faces of those watching it.

We listened for bears (especially the one that ripped up a campsite nearby), laughed at squirrels that reminded my kids of their dogs and chased chipmunks out of the granola.

We slept in a tent, shoulder to shoulder, wearing earplugs to tone down the snoring decibels.

We walked for what felt like miles upriver to jump on inner tubes and float downstream, bobbing and spinning over rapids. My youngest swam beside me — the way I once swam with him — to steer me away from boulders and keep me safe from harm.

We ate in the cafeteria, made s’mores over a campfire, got so dirty we could pass as coal miners and vowed to come back again soon. Then we packed up to go back to our separate lives.

Each time I say goodbye to my children, I realize it might be my last time to see them. So I study them closely, memorizing faces and smiles, the light in their eyes. I don’t let on that I’m doing it. If they knew, it would creep them out. I do it on the sly, saving the memory until we meet again.

Before leaving California, I flew to Los Angeles to see my oldest in his new place. I woke this morning in his guest room with Charlie, his cat, walking up and down my spine. So I left the boy sleeping and walked to a market to buy Diet Coke.

That’s how I met the Cuban. I was standing at a meat counter when he danced up, grinning like a mule eating briars.

“I am happy,” he told me, “because I’m going to Cuba!”

It had been a long time, he said, since he last visited his homeland, and he was eager for a chance to eat and drink and dance and laugh with his family and old friends.

I started to say that I knew how he felt; that home for me is more than a place; that I find it in rivers and mountains and traditions and memories; that I hear it in music and laughter and wind in the trees; that I see it in the sunset and the moonrise and, most of all, in the eyes of the people I love.

Instead, I just said that I was happy for him, and for me, because I, too, am going home to my husband in Las Vegas.

“Las Vegas?” he said. “You should come with me to Cuba.”

     

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