June: Hanging with the Homies

My brother George was already there at the house with his two little ones, and his wife Davina arrived the next day. It was pretty tough going for the first week...lots of very large logistical movements as we marched through a series of "reunion" meals and events for anything up to 22 people, sort of family but also sort of strangers, at a sitting. This was the first time we four siblings and parents had gathered together in 22 years. We did really well together…probably better than when we were last all sharing a single roof full time (back in 1978).

The family house is a recent purchase: 1890's construction, had to be almost gutted and rebuilt over the past year at enormous cost and strain on my otherwise studiously modest parents. They had not even spent the first night in the house before we all started arriving...so it was truly a baptism by fire.

George and Div had kindly donated some spare days on their rental wagon to us, so we hooned up to western Virginia for a weekend to see the hillbillies and attend a Native American pow-wow. Lots of resonance with blackfella business...same casual approach to ceremony, same dissipated culture, same love of a good time and plenty of tucker, same tragic sense of wreckage.
Drove a bit of the Appalachians on Skyline Drive and then back through Monticello's Jefferson centre (amazing guy, and very impressive what you can accomplish with a few hundred slaves...) A good tour of the countryside clocking 900km.

Managed to fix up my Dad's little sailing skiff (lugger yawl, google Devon Dapper) and have a whole series of water adventures. Caro is a natural on the helm, but Varsha needed a bit of reassurance when the wind gusted and our lee rail kissed the choppy brack of the Elizabeth River.

Portsmouth is part of the original colonisation by the Brits...early 1600's. Lots of history and graceful old buildings tucked amongst the rural decay and poverty and the overwhelming presence of the military. Always fighter jets roaring around overhead and the skyline dense with warships, supply ships, and Walmart ships (I classify Walmart as a military operation).

Dad drove us up to Jamestown (celebrating this year its 400th birthday) where we tried again to get a context for the whole New World thing, Caro in the enormous museum and me and Varsha out in the historical village looking at barrel-maker tools and foundries and stacks of drying tobacco. So much resourcefulness and stupidity in the same little wooden stockade. And the audacity of it all. Gotta admire the nerve to get on a leaky little rowboat and drift across an entire ocean to stake out your tobacco empire in the middle of a few million indigenous adepts. Three cheers for Guns, Germs & Steel, I guess.

Too many "firsts" and "amazings" to stack up here...gotta keep some sort of narrative flow (had you noticed?)