I traveled so many places and did so many things over the past week, I'm no doubt already forgetting things I might have thought at the time I would want to blog about when I got the chance. Basically, this post is for whatever additional details I want to note, which either weren't quite appropriate or wouldn't quite fit in the travelogue emails I sent out last night (and which I shortly thereafter also posted to this blog).

For instance: my brother's attire on Friday, the day Dad and Sherri and I arrived. I had done the same as I have done for similar trips in the past, taking the Sound Transit Express 594 bus down to the State Route 512 Park & Ride south of Tacoma, where Dad and Sherri met me on their way up from Olympia. I then rode with them north through Tacoma to Federal Way, cut over to Highway 18 to bypass Seattle to get to I-90 eastbound, and then on all the way to Wallace—I traveled with them until Shobhit met up with us in Leavenworth on Monday. Dad and Sherri and I stopped in Coeur d'Alene for two reasons, to do some shopping and get gas at Costco, and then for Dad and Sherri to try a locally famous burger joint whose burgers they were not especially impressed with.

Anyway, I'm digressing already. I got to the 512 Park & Ride shortly after 9 a.m. on Friday last week, and we pulled into the vacation rental in Wallace at about a quarter after 4 p.m. We took some time to settle in, I took a bunch of photos and even a video tour of the vacation home, and Christopher and his boys had met up with us a bit after 6:00. By 6:30 we were looking around downtown Wallace for a place to get dinner. After first trying The Pizza Factory and discovering their dining area was closed to dining-in, we wound up at a place called The Fainting Goat. Christopher and I both ordered a pineapple hard cider that we loved so much we looked up where we could buy it at retail.

At one point, I had to text Gabriel about the hat my brother was wearing. It read, AWAKE BUT NOT WOKE.

Gabriel was all kinds of offended on my behalf, which was honestly a lot more than I needed or was necessary. I just don't put up with that bullshit anymore, he texted me. I don't know how/why you do. Well honestly, it was pretty easy as to both the how and the why: what purpose would it serve for me to engage Christopher in an argument about it at this particular moment, which would only serve to ruin everyone's evening and maybe even weekend, and Christopher's 50th birthday the next day was the entire reason we were all there?

Besides, in something close to but not quite my brother's defense, I think there is a distinction to be made here. These sorts of things have degrees of severity, and although this hat was kind of halfway there in my opinion, it's still not the same as, for example, Sara wearing a MAGA hat to the 2019 family picnic. I will always be convinced she wore that hat as a very deliberate provocation, because that is who she is. She literally might as well have been wearing a Confederate hat on her head, and I would bet money she wouldn't think there would be anything wrong with that either.

A message like AWAKE BUT NOT WOKE is not especially thoughtful, and arguably even willfully ignorant, but it's still in a different category. I don't think Christopher is even the biggest fan of Donald Trump (though he would still be a lot closer to it than me), and he's a very, very different person from Sara. I can easily see it having merely been the hat he had handy when leaving the house and he grabbed it without even thinking about it. I don't believe at all that he wore it as a deliberate provocation, the way that Sara did with hers.

To be fair, there is still the issue of the sentiment to begin with, and the fact that he certainly would have paid attention to the message, and agreed with it, when he first procured the hat. It does still advertise his worldview. The thing is, I can also understand how he got that worldview, without agreeing with it: Christopher is clearly of the ilk that "wokeness" has gone to counterproductive extremes in recent years. In fact, I was probably the only one in that entire group who felt differently—if asked, I'm sure Dad and Sherri would have both agreed with it as well. Not that I think a single one of them has a true understanding of what "wokeness" actually means or what its original intent comes from. What people with this attitude don't understand is that being "woke" means nothing more than alertness to injustice and racism. To proudly state you are NOT WOKE is literally to say you are proudly ignoring injustice and racism.

To conservatives, though, being "woke" is an extremist position, and being merely awake is sufficient to be alert to injustice and racism, hence the hat message's supposed distinction. The way I see it, they have been conditioned by right-wing talking points to pervert what the meaning of the term actually is. The distinction is really between the idea that awarenes is enough (it absolutely is not) and action is not their responsibility (it actually is). Plus, and they'll certainly hate me saying this, it makes them defensive to any criticism of their very whiteness. This is the same point of view that convinces people that affirmative action is unjust or so-called "reverse racism."

It's an imaginary, defensive line in the sand, and one that my brother's hat declares as obviously as if he had been wearing it on a sandwich board sign. Still, tolerance goes both ways, and this wasn't egregious enough for me; I couldn't be bothered to get all up in arms about it, aside from texting a friend about it. As I noted to Gabriel, I save all of my murderous rage for my husband.

It does amuse me to note that, at the same time he wore that hat (which would not have been seen as in any way "provocative" by virtually any other locals in the area), he wore a hoodie with the words FREE HUGS on it. I'm tempted to say "presumably not for 'woke' people," but that would be unfair and hypocritical. I have no doubt my brother could openly disagree with someone who very much supports "wokeness" and still give them a hug. (I'm suddenly reminded of an argument I once witness in Venice Beach that really seemed like it might get violent, and it actually ended in a handshake and an apology. These scenarios are rare but they do happen.)

As for Gabriel, at one point I texted him, I'm not exactly in a position to cause a stink here, in that case I should not have come at all. And he wrote back: You're a good man. That felt weird typing that. I found that amusing and also wanted to make a record of it here for posterity. That's verbatim! Transcribed from text, which will disappear eventually, but this post should (hopefully) remain indefinitely.

Also, given that I chose not even to acknowledge that dumb hat, dinner on Friday was perfectly pleasant, and Christopher and I even talked movies for a bit. I had a few horror movies to recommend to him. I rarely see horror movies but that's still a numbers game: I see such a massive number of movies every year that even if 1 out of 100 is in the horror genre, I have a couple from the past few years that I can recommend.

The next day, TJ apparently had to work—he's got a job now as an on-call city bus driver in Spokane—so Nikki drove over with the kids without him. Elijah has been born since the last time we saw them, over Father's Day weekend last year; Dad and Sherri and I all got to meet him for the first time on Saturday, Christopher's actual birthday, when Dad made eggs benedict brunch for everyone. As you can see, Elijah is incredibly cute.

It was interesting to hear how many times Sherri spoke about how "excited" Dad was to cook this brunch for Christopher's birthday. Dad was happy to do it, clearly, and it's been ages since he's done anything this special for Christopher specifically—to be fair, it could be argued Dad has not made this much of a fuss over Christopher since he graduated high school, thirty years ago. That point really just occurred to me as I was writing this. Still, Dad's also very much a planner, and that's really all this entailed; I would hesitate to use the word "excited," myself. Dad certainly didn't say that himself, or put it in those terms. More than anything, he wanted to be fair: having 50th birthday parties for Angel and Gina and then ignoring Christopher really would have been a dick move. Or, maybe Dad really was excited, whether he'd have used the word himself or not. It's pretty safe to say Sherri knows my dad, and how he thinks, more intimately than I do.

He spent a lot of time on that brunch, that's for sure. He used only one griddle, and so he could really only make three plates of eggs benedict at a time—to feel a total of six adults and two teenagers. (Cheyanna and Elijah really just picked off of Nikki's plate.) And Dad made second plates for Christopher and all three of the boys, so really he made twelve plates of eggs benedict. He did it well, too; it was very tasty.

Christopher was a lot more conscientious about his birthday outfit, by the way. He wore a T-shirt with a bunch of writing on it, that he ordered just for this birthday. It read:

~50~
ALL BARK NO BITE
CLASSIC
QUALITY WITHOUT COMPROMISE
GENUINE SERIES
LIMITED EDITION * ONE OF A KIND
1972
Crafted To
PERFECTION
ALL ORIGINAL PARTS
MOSTLY

I found this amusing, almost charming, something that was not too far off from something I would wear, at least in terms of its self-celebratory sentiments. I'm all about anyone doing that, so long as it comes from a healthy place, and I actually think this does.

So, I have noted that Nikki made it, as did the three boys, quite easily given Tristen lives with Christopher and this happened to be a weekend for Christian and Braeden to visit anyway. The only one missing, which was pretty easy to predict, was Becca (although to be fair, and Sherri noted this, Becca actually made it to Sherri's 70th birthday party on Easter Sunday, as did Christopher and the boys, and that time it was Nikki who was unable to make it).

There was pretty big news from Becca that day, though: she's pregnant. She posted the announcement on Facebook Friday evening last week, but I didn't see it until Saturday morning. I looked up at Dad and said, "Becca's pregnant?" Dad was like, "I don't know, is she?" Neither he or Sherri knew either.

Becca's post asked people to "vote" with green or purple hearts whether they want it to be a boy or a girl. I responded with a brown heart. I realized later that some might interpret that to have something to do with Tyler being Black (although most people looking through the comments probably aren't analyzing them with that level of nuance), but all it had to do with for me was literally not wanting to play into the gender binary game. I actually looked up what color happens when you mix green with purple, but because both of those colors occur with the mixing of two other colors, it just turns into a kind of dark gray-brown. So, I posted a brown heart. Also, this way she could see my acknowledgment of her announcement but I didn't have to express the kind of preference she was asking for. It kind of amazes me how even people with someone like me in their lives still default to this kind of binary thinking.

Not only that, but they aren't even approaching their relationship in a binary way! Some of the photos in that post include another grown woman, who apparently has her own little girl. Given this was a pregnancy announcement, which is a pretty intimate family-oriented thing to share, you can probably ascertain what that means, if you think about it long enough. I'm not going to lie, while I don't judge any alternative family structure at all, I do have a fair idea of Becca's personality, and this leaves me with some concern about their long term future. Not that it's any of my business: Becca can either make or own mistakes, or make decisions that turn out to prove everyone's expectations wrong. God knows that's what Shobhit and I did when we had a long distance relationship for six and a half years. Hell, even Mom and Bill proved everyone wrong by getting married at a place called The Hitching Post in Coeur d'Alene only 13 days after they met in person in 1997, and they stayed together until Mom's passing 23 years later. Dad and Sherri and I drove right past The Hitching Post when we were in Coeur d'Alene, by the way. That was a slightly surreal moment.

Anyway. Another one of my nephews, Gina's son David, is already expecting another child as well. This means I have two more grandnieces or grandnephews on the way, which will take the total up to eleven. Twelve if you count Alex's girlfriend's other little girl, but based on what I've heard lately, I'm having a hard time imagining long term permanence there. That's a whole other story. In terms of actual blood relations or married-relations, I have 10 nieces and nephews, and 9 grandnieces and grandnephews. And two more on the way. I have wondered if and when Becca and Tyler will have children, and I guess now I know.

I guess that's all the additional stuff I have to say about the visit to Wallace, except to say it was my 29th visit: since 2003, 11 different years with only one visit; and 9 different years with two visits. I need to create a collection of photo albums on my Flickr account that tracks all visits to Wallace; that used to be covered with just my "Mom and Idaho Visits," but visits just to see Christopher no longer fit in that collection. I'll get on that as soon as I can!

[posted 12:10 pm]