Second Chances

My uncle is handsome, funny, athletic and outdoorsy. He grew up just east of Seattle, that Emerald city nestled between the Olympics to the West and the Cascades to the East. Interstate 90, which can take you all the way to Chicago, starts in Seattle. On a sunny day, point your car west towards the city and the Cascade mountains separating the western part of the state from Eastern Washington loom in your rearview mirror, while the Olympic mountains on the peninsula tower close over the city, even though you have to take a ferry boat to reach them.

This was my uncle and mother's playground. They came by their outdoor legacy honestly; their grandparents actually lived on the peninsula and are famous in their small town for forming a group called Over the Hill Hikers after their retirement in 1981. Harriet Hertzog planned the hiking schedule for nearly 30 years, and could name 50 hikes on the Olympic Peninsula without a guidebook. My uncle hiked all over the Pacific Northwest with them, so when he climbed Mt. Rainier and Mt. Kilimanjaro as an adult, it was in part because mountains are part of his story.

Isn't it magical?

These mountains, and these people, are my legacy. I too hiked with my great grandparents and their elderly friends on the Olympic Peninsula, and to this day the Dungeness Spit is my favorite place in the Pacific Northwest, hands down. I learned to ski on the slopes of the Cascades on my mom's outdated (super long) but fully-funcioning, skis. (But in middle school I switched to snowboarding because using skis from the 80s was embarrassing.)

Perhaps that is the kind of American dream that makes family reunions so common in America. Some families stick close to home and raise their kids with the same wonderful experiences they had as children, including nearby grandparents. I'm so thankful I traveled and explored the same territory as my mom and uncle. Before we moved abroad, that life would have been a dream come true for me, and I do mourn its loss sometimes.

That's one kind of do-over.

After her magical mountain-filled childhood, my mother left the state for college with a substance abuse problem that was turning into a mental health problem, and shortly after got pregnant with me with my dad, who had his own addictions. Substance abuse and mental health issues make parenting hard, and when I was three years old, I went to stay with my grandma during a particularly hard time, and I never lived with my parents again.

My grandparents shared the job of raising me. This is another kind of do-over.

I'm not as outdoorsy as my uncle. One time he took me hiking on a well known trail called Little Si, and I grew tired of the switchbacks and the lack of air and we didn't even make it to the top. I didn't have the same childhood as my parents, although their parents also raised me. In some ways, like when it came to hiking 6 miles of switchbacks, this made me weak. Parents are supposed to be young, energetic, and idealistic. Mine were stuck in a vicious cycle of addiction, and my grandparents stepped in. But they were thinking about retirement, a little tired, and pragmatic. (They absolutely were not old.) But they were also full of love, and that made me strong.

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in this series "Do-Over".