I'll be home for Christmas

I moved away from sunny San Diego ten years ago. Came up here to Portland to heal. Didn't know I was healing, then, of course. You never know what you're really chasing when you're chasing a dream. Wouldn't be a dream if you did.

_{Me and Pilot at Mission Trails in San Diego.}

The romantic part of me, the dreamer, said she wanted to move to the Pacific Northwest to learn how to be a witch. Not the pointy-hat-wearing, satanic-circle-chanting, magick and melting sugar kind of witch (not that I hold any judgment against this type of witch, mind you). I just wanted to explore all the possibilities of my humanity and see what I was capable of. Commune with nature and heal things with the laying on of hands, if that was indeed possible. And, well, shit, long story crammed into a short sentence that goes something like ten years later, here I am, a massage therapist and reiki master and a slave to a few dozen crows, I find myself reflecting on how funny it is that we intuitively know what we're looking for even when we don't know wtf we're doing. Who I am now looks nothing like I imagined ten years ago, and yet I am exactly the person I wanted to be. Strong, confident, brave, kind, and free.

_{Cousin Bonnie, Pilot, Me, on top of Black Mountain, San Diego County.}

During this Pacific Northwest Quest of self-discovery or self-realization or whatever we want to call it, I went back and visited San Diego more than a few times. Probably about once every year and a half. Often it felt like duty. A responsibility to family. Each time I rolled into that blinding concrete paradise I wanted instantly to turn around and run back home to my dark and damp sanctuary. I thought it was the contrast in scenery. Culture shock. Maybe that was part of it, but mostly it was my own fear. I was afraid of getting sucked back into a former lifestyle of social anxiety and appeasement. Of losing myself.

_{Pelican art I've made for my dad over the last ten years.}

It took a long time to find the me that I love and trust. Realistically, most of my current life. I'm a young 42, now. I think I found me when I was a late 41. Funny thing about finally finding yourself, though, once you do, you know you will never get lost again. It took four decades, but I finally have all the self-love that I need to trust that I will continue to make decisions that help me grow, and turn away from things that make me shrink. Which, much to my delight, has made going home to visit family ridiculously easy. More than that, makes it fun. I get to be with the people I love without being afraid of them.

_{L-R: Cousin Ben, Cousin Me (I'm either burping or deep-throating a taquito), Cousin-in-law Mike, Cousin Joey, Cousin-in-law Nhien.}

I went to San Diego for Thanksgiving this year. In the ten years I'd been away, I had not once gone back for the holidays. So much has changed. People have died. Some deaths were expected. Others traumatic and terrible. One was, if you can believe it, a peaceful relief.

_{Normal Heights, SD, at night.}

_{Pilot curled up on a chair in the ramen house pretending not to be waiting for a bite of pork belly.}

People have been born, too. A couple of us kids have managed to reproduce. The family persists.

_{Me reading to long-legged baby Otto from a book I bought for him in the Yukon.}

It's a very special kind of family. Very close. The condensed explanation being that of the family of Horvitz Brothers and the family of Herman Sisters, three of them paired off and reproduced, creating me and a slew of cousins that are, without it being incest, the genetic equivalent of half-siblings. Entire summers were spent together. Every holiday, and many, many birthdays, were spent together.

_{Young Maximus, obliging us with a photo when he would much rather be eating veggie stix. Titus in the upper left. Pilot in my arms, eyeing said veggie stix.}

Things change, though. The locations of the parties change as the elders get older. All of the eldest elders from my childhood are gone, now. Now it's our parents that host the parties. But, dammit, when I was down for Thanksgiving and saw all these parents in one place I realized just how long ten years really is. Ten years I've been gone. Ten years people have aged. There may not be many more of these close-knit family gatherings. The hosts are in their seventies. How much energy do they have left for such a responsibility? People (including myself) are moving away. Growing apart as they grow their own families. I can't stop it, but I know what I can do. I can make the hellish 16-hour drive through Central Valley and back twice in the span of one month to share at least one more holiday party with the crew before Time takes over.

_{Pilot in San Diego posing for his Uncle Joey.}

_{Me and a couple of grand old ladies (Princess Pig and Mr. Poppers aka Snabby).}

_{My friend Rachael, who frequently visits me in Portland, and me.}

_{L-R: Max, my dad, Cousin Bonnie, Cousin Ben, Me.}

_{Part of my dad's crazy eclectic museum of neat-o stuff at his office.}

_{Pilot, breaded in November sand on Dog Beach in OB.}

_{Pies I made in my cousin's oven. Gluten-free.}

_{L-R: Laurie, Dad, me. Photo taken for my brother, who lives in Osaka.}

_{Me, Pilot, my Dad.}

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_{All pictures and words copyright Anna Horvitz (me) and cannot be used without my consent.}