My sister and I, along with our grandmother, aunt, and our three cousins, piled into a van and headed south to Mustang Island, Texas. I have few solid memories of my childhood, for good or ill, but there are moments from this trip I will never forget:

CC Image • amy in holland on Flickr

• My youngest cousin, who’s the same age as me, singing Feliz Navidad for the entirety of the trip. To this day, whenever I hear that song, I hear his eight-year-old voice singing it and then I want to punch something.
• Upon arrival at the hotel, we changed into our swim trunks and ran down to the beach, only to be confronted with a serious cold front. We ran back to the hotel as quickly as possible, wind and sand whipping our skin and defeating our spirits. It remained cold and wet for the duration of the trip.
• My youngest cousin placing ice beneath the covers at the end of his sister’s bed for her to find at some future moment. I don’t remember if I was an accomplice to this prank or not, but I surely knew about it before it occurred. However, he may have coerced me to silence by threatening me with ten more verses of Feliz Navidad.
• My sister and middle cousin shouting “Happy New Year! Happy New Year!” out of their hotel window, only to be met in response by a “SHUT UP!” from some other hotel window.
• Playing Spy Hunter in the hotel’s arcade, and by arcade I mean the one arcade game they had in the corner.

I don’t remember any of the gifts I received that year. I don’t remember what the ride home was like, or if my youngest cousin had taken up another song for my enjoyment annoyance. But I wonder why I remember the moments I do . . .

• For as much as he annoyed me as a kid (and I was an easily perturbed kid—a perfect target), my youngest cousin was the brother I never had. He is now an accomplished guitarist. Music has fed his soul, and you can hear that in his playing.
• The cold front at the beach was a reminder that life is very much not in our control. It was my first lesson in learning to make do, to endure, to even seek joy, despite the negative circumstances presented to you—characteristics evidenced by my grandmother, especially then.
• Then as now, I have a family and extended family that gets along with each other. More than that, we enjoy getting together. The older I get the more I realize how precious and providential a gift this is. From my mom to my sister to cousins and aunts and uncles, I am blessed by close family who know how to weather storms together, like those that bear down on Christmas beach vacations and those that slowly but all too quickly steal our loved ones away.
• Maybe this is the nostalgia of age speaking, or the forced connections of an English Major two decades removed from a memorable childhood experience, but maybe I played Spy Hunter (a simple though unwinnable game where you drive a car away from the bad guys) so much because I was trying to escape the real reason we were at the beach.

More than a year earlier, my grandfather had died due to brain cancer. It was the first traumatic experience of my life—a defining moment that I still wish could have been averted. Not wanting to go through traditions that were sure to be filled with difficult memories of Christmases past, our family piled into a van, endured Feliz Navidad and wicked beach weather, and filled our idle time with diversions so that the real reason we were there wouldn’t drown us.

And yet I don’t remember sadness. I don’t remember denial. Out of all the Christmases I remember, this one is indelible. This is the one that reminds me that, no matter how far you drive, you won’t escape death, but you also won’t escape a family who loves each other and relies on God to provide for them, even in the midst of tragedy.

Maybe it was this trip that solidified our familial solidarity. Maybe it was through the grief and the wind and the cold and the gritty, oil-soaked sand that our bonds as a family were stretched tight, so that even when we’re far apart, we’re never that far away from each other. I’m grateful for that strange trip down south to a mostly uninhabited beach, even though I wish it would have happened for a vastly different reason.

To my friends who have known loss this year and must experience this Christmas as the first without their loved one . . .

To my family who is there for each other, and has been instrumental to so much in my own life, both then and now . . .

And to my grandmother and grandfather, the woman I most respect and the man I most miss . . .

Feliz Navidad, truly, from the bottom of my heart.

My doctor told me of a 93-year-old patient he recently had who came to his office with both an iPad and and iPhone. The doctor, amused by this seeming anachronistic sight, told the elderly man, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m impressed that someone at your age is so adept with such technology.” To which the man curtly replied, “Well, you don’t live to be 93 by being stupid.”

Since we wanted to install the system this Sunday, when I head up to Waco to see her and the rest of my family, and since the last time I ordered a system from Dell (a refurbed desktop) it came from Round Rock, I told my grandmother I’d have them ship it to me in Georgetown, just a few miles from Round Rock, in hopes that it would arrive via free 3-5 day ground shipping before Sunday.

After checking the tracking number, I was shocked to see that the computer was being shipped from Tennessee! I was saddened by the fact, but chalked it up to the fact that my grandmother’s computer was not a refurb unit, and, ergo, was not being shipped from Round Rock. Oh well.

I just checked the tracking number again tonight (Friday). Where is the computer currently sitting? At a DHL station. In Waco!

I’m scheduled to receive the packages on Monday, one day after I’ve gone to visit her.

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Brought to you by a drug rehab recovery center in Malibu. Really? Really.

Possibly even more fun was the golf the next day at the Lake Park Golf Club in Lewisville. It’s a straight, short course, par 70, so I felt like I was doing a lot better than normal, which I was, at least for the front nine. I think I had 4 or 5 pars for the round, which is great for me. I also had the best shot of the day. I was two inches from the hole, a gimme, and I was goofing around, taking a large backswing with my putter and pretending I was going to launch the ball somewhere. I hit the top of the ball with the bottom of my putter, the ball spun high into the air, then dropped straight into the hole. I will never be able to do that again.

We ate at Babe’s that night, a restaurant in Sanger, TX. Great food, and the waitresses sing, and they’re actually good. Also, there’s a cutout of John Wayne that peers into the window of the women’s restroom. (I only know this because the Woman told me so – I don’t often visit women’s restrooms, what with their sofas and bathroom vanities). Going to Babe’s is almost as much a ritual as the family summer concerts are becoming.

It’s always interesting what kinds of rituals form as the newer generations grow up. To the loyal few, do you have family rituals?

Also, my grandmother made a point to say how much she appreciates the fact that our extended family gets along so well. It’s something I thought was absolutely normal growing up, but the older I get the more I realize how fortunate I am to have the family I have.