Thoughts as I waited to board my train to Washington, DC yesterday afternoon:
Clearly, there is some kind of gravitational force pulling me down to the DC metro area this afternoon – a wet, lazy Saturday when I would otherwise most likely be lying around the house, reading, hanging out with the pets – maybe, if I were feeling particularly motivated, heading over to the gym for a run, but certainly nothing more arduous than that. Instead, I am parked at 30th Street Station, loving the Cosi wireless, thinking, once again, about First Descents.
The emails came last week, from an FD figure I have yet to meet: “Stepmom.” Come down to DC next weekend, she urged. There’s a fundraiser at my house, a screening of a documentary about the program and a memorial walk in honor of Alan Goldberg, the former FD executive director who passed away last year. Oy! Didn’t I just get back from Denver? Hadn’t I already invited my sister and nephew down for that weekend? What is happening to me?!?
Of course, the evening I received Stepmom’s email, I had the good (but also rather unexpected and sudden) fortune of meeting up with Hottie Bucks, fellow Jackson camper and just all-around awesome soul. We spent two hours blabbing over some beer and wine, and, as with everyone with whom I shared Jackson, there was this tremendous sense of connection, of purity of emotion, that just over-took me as soon as HB and I sat down at The Good Dog. It’s an amazing thing, leaving me intoxicated, empowered, each time my own psychic orbit crosses paths with that of another FD’er.
So, after a few days of ironing out logistics, it’s off to DC I go, to hang with Huggles, Flippy, B. Rad and Chunks. And Stepmom. And who knows who else.
I love this new family so dearly. And the funny thing is, as Double-Oh texted me right after we parted company in the Denver airport at the end of camp, “We’re just getting started.”