Back Together again

After years of living apart and only seeing each other as visitors, I invited my brother, Rogelio, to vacation with us during the summer of 2006. Dora, my sister, regularly travels with us. She gets along great with my wife, Elfie. Dora and I have gotten along since we were young. Rogelio and I had some minor disagreements while growing up. We were very different and still are.

Anyways, My wife, Dora and I had decided that we wanted to travel to Colorado by way of New Mexico without any plans. We were going to meander our way up and visit whatever caught our fancy. I called Rogelio, whom we always called, Roge, and told him about our plans. I asked him if he wanted to come along. To my surprise he said, Yes.

We were starting our trip on a Sunday and I flew in from Boston the Thursday before, Dora flew in from Florida the Friday before and Roge flew in from Las Vegas that Saturday and had to drive to Waco. We left Waco early in the morning. It was a beautiful day.

We did meander through New Mexico. It took us four days to get to Colorado. We had a great time. We got to spend a lot of time getting to know each other again. The driving in between stops was spent talking about growing up, our family, our parents, and so many other thing. We all had memories about Eagle Pass and the discussions helped to fill in gaps on some of those memories. Gaps created by the passage of so many years.

We found out that we still had the same differences. We argued about where we were going, how we were going to get there and what we were going to do once we got there. Then we would laugh because we sounded just like we did 30 or 40 years ago. We found that we still enjoyed each others company. Mom and Dad would have been proud of how well we got along, most of the time. We had an added perspective with my wife there. She would point out some of our differences and settle some of our arguments. She also provided Dora with some female support, something that Dora didn't have when we were growing up. Back then, if we were going to play any games it always ended up being boy games - army, wrestling, cowboys and Indians, and our toys were trucks, soldiers, guns, swords, etc.
We ended up spending seven days together. They were seven priceless days. We recaptured all the love, laughter, closeness, and joy that we had as kids. We took this picture because fighting with each other was part of growing up. We did it as kids, we don't have to do it as grown-ups. Maybe this year we can travel together again, if our schedules can be coordinated this time.