Another Beginning

Normally a day that includes spending time at LAX would not be cause to celebrate. Today is different, however. Nancy’s coming home.

Nancy is my expat sister. Younger than me by two years, she’s spent her entire adult life living abroad. The earlier years of her life were spent being a thorn in my side.

For starters, she was the favorite child of our parents who didn’t conceal their pride in Nancy’s intellectual achievements.  It wasn’t until midlife that I realized Nancy had suffered as much as I had because of the preferential treatment she’d received (but never solicited).

That wasn’t what drove me the craziest, however. What perplexed me the most was the certainty with which Nancy choose her path in life. From the moment she learned about archaeology, she knew where she was headed.

How, I marveled, could a 14-year-old know such a thing? I was older, after all, and totally clueless. I remained that way until the end of my third decade. But not Nancy.

While I was floundering and frustrated, Nancy was mastering Latin, Greek and Italian. While I was fearing I’d be spending my life in Janesville, Minnesota, Nancy was setting up her apartment in Athens, Greece.

Years passed with irregular and infrequent contact. Then things began to change.

One by one, family members began making trips to Greece to visit her. They’d return filled with enthusiasm, bearing stacks of photos of ruins and what looked to me like rubble piles.

I was the last person in the WInter clan to make the trip myself. It was eye-opening and life-changing. It was the first of several visits I made to her adopted homeland, including the one I made when Nancy was hospitalized and needed a bit of backup.

A few years ago, Nancy left Athens and moved to Rome. Since her specialty is Etruscan architecture, she had spent a great deal of time on excavations in Italy and doing research for her book Symbols of Wealth and Power .

Her affection for Italy was eagerly shared with all of us. We had family reunions in Sinalunga, Lucca, Venice and Florence. We loved having an Italian speaker and scholarly expert as our personal tour guide.

These shared travel adventures were filled with laughter and new discoveries about each other. We developed a new ease with each other that spilled over into time together back home.

So I’m not the only member of our family starting a new chapter in life. It seems likely, of course, that Nancy’s adjustment to California living will be more of a change than mine has been. After all, I just drove in from the desert.

I also imagine that all four of my siblings are wondering what this new gathering of the clan will bring. This is, amazingly, the first time in half a century that we’ve all lived within driving distance of one another.

There will be festivities with the entire family on Sunday—and much to celebrate when Thanksgiving rolls around this year.

Right now, however, I’m just thinking about the short road trip to LAX with my sister Margaret and brother Jim. And I’m recalling Jane Howard’s reminder: “Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.”