Today, I’m going to tell you about my favorite purchase of 2024. But to do that, I have to tell a little story. Most of my posts have stories weaved into them, because I love using storytelling in my writing. Today is really no different, but this post is perhaps even more story forward than usual. If that sounds ok to you, I hope you’ll read on.
The story begins way back (doesn’t it feel like way back?) in 2020. During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, my mom started a tradition called “Family Zoom” that has now become a semi-regular occurrence. While we were all sitting at home alone, wallowing in our inability to go out and do anything or see anyone, my mom broke that loneliness by starting a weekly Zoom session for her side of the family. On Sundays at 4:00 pm Eastern time, we knew we could all expect an email with a Zoom link. There was no obligation to show up, the “Zoom room” was just there in case we needed some social connection with people we knew and loved.
Fast forward 5 years, and Mom is still sending the occasional “expect a Fam Zoom on Sunday” email. They no longer occur weekly, but they are spontaneous and fun. You never know who will be there, or what we’ll talk about. But it’s a way we can all continue connecting with family who are scattered all over the country. Who knew we didn’t need a pandemic to actually spend time together with loved ones who live far away?
It’s been wonderful for me to engage with my family like this. It was perhaps the spark that initiated my goal to prioritize friends and family back in 2023, which has now become less of a goal and more just a part of my life.
So when one of my cousins who lives in Canada signed onto Fam Zoom one day and shared that she, her sister (my other Canadian cousin), and her dad (my uncle) were throwing a party in honor of the 10-year anniversary since my aunt’s passing, I knew I had to go. I didn’t just have to go, I felt a longing to go, deep in my bones. For starters, I wanted to be there for my cousin, my cousin whom I saw the least but who I had felt the most connected to growing up. I also wanted to see Nova Scotia again, a place I loved visiting when growing up, even though visits were rare. And just as importantly, I wanted to be there for my mom, as my aunt Patty (names have been changed in this story for privacy) was her closest sibling. Patty’s death had absolutely shattered my mom 10 years earlier. As Mom once told me, you don’t expect to lose a sibling when you’re 55; the death of parents is hard, but the death of a sibling is immensely harder.
Once I found out that likely none of my mom’s other siblings would be attending the party, it was especially essential to me that I make the trip. My mom is 1 of 5 children, and Patty was her eldest sister (she was 12 years older than my mom). The tale goes that my grandparents had their 3 perfect kids, the perfect family of 5, until Patty threw a coin into a wishing well and wished desperately for a baby sister. Shortly thereafter, along came my mom, followed closely by her baby brother/my uncle. And thus, the perfect family size grew from 5 to 7.
Patty was what her mom (my grandma) called a hippie. Patty and her husband Chuck moved to Nova Scotia in the early 70s, during the Vietnam War. They lived in a house they built themselves. My uncle was a carpenter, and Patty was an artist. Their house is incredibly tiny but wonderfully efficient (Uncle Chuck still lives in the house today). They didn’t even have a bathroom inside the house (they had an outhouse) until I was a teen. I think of the town I live in Vermont as a quiet, small, rural town, but it pales in comparison to where Patty and Chuck lived in Nova Scotia.
Even though Patty had moved so far away from home back in the 70s, my mom didn’t let the distance stop her from visiting her favorite sibling. Patty gave my mom her first 2 nieces, after all (and I sure know how that feels). When we visited for the party, Mom reminisced about her younger days going to visit Patty in Nova Scotia. She remembers getting so lost when she first started visiting, as all the roads around where they lived were unpaved and unmarked (and they still are, to this day). Having no idea how to navigate the sign-less roads, she’d drive around for hours looking for the right house. But she said it helped her learn the area.
And I used to love visiting as well, staying up late with my older cousins in their tiny rooms in their tiny house, with woods and woods to roam and roam. I tried to Google their town for this post, and the internet doesn’t even register it as a town. And yet oh, but it is. There is a town center that consists of a single building that houses almost every local event you can imagine. The sense of community there is palpable. I felt it when I visited for the party, which was held at, you guessed it, the single building in the town center!
As the trip got closer, I realized that I had even other, almost selfish reasons for wanting to go. My childhood memories with my cousin are something wild. Even though we lived far apart, my cousin was everything to me. When we saw each other, we’d pick up right where we left off. We loved the same music, and the same movies. And she was just enough older than me (3.5 years) that I was absolutely in awe of everything she did and everything she was. When we parted, I couldn’t wait for the day I’d see her again. I’d have a broken heart for days after she was gone. I can’t even imagine my cousin’s pain surrounding her mother’s death. It’s nearly unbearable for me to think about losing my mom at this age. And I wasn’t able to go to any of the services held for Patty after she passed. I never connected with my cousin about it, never had the chance to talk with her about any of her feelings. But now was my chance to be there for my cousin, and my mom, and honor my aunt in a way I hadn’t been able to since she passed. I had to go.
As the trip started to take shape, and plans began to solidify (perhaps you’d be surprised to hear how difficult of a journey it can be to get to Nova Scotia from New England), Mr. Dink who’d been an early contender, decided not to go, and my uncle Robbie (my mom’s youngest brother) decided to join. There are several ways to travel: all by car, all air travel, half road trip/half ferry, etc. Flights are expensive and end up taking just as long as driving. Same for the ferry. From where I live in Vermont, it’s a 14-hour drive, which I’ve done all in one day for my cousin’s wedding (and I vowed to never do again).
After all options were discussed and hashed out over and over (because that’s how my family rolls), I somehow found myself gearing up for a 2-day road trip on either end of the party, with my mom and Uncle Robbie. Something I would never have guessed would ever happen in a million years, was in fact happening. I knew it would be a lot, but likely a trip for the history books. And that ended up being exactly right.
You could tell everyone was a little uneasy at first, as we packed the car and go ready to leave. We’re all quite set in our ways at this point in our lives, so we’d have to do some compromising. Plus, I’m a kid who’s no longer a kid but whose adult family members will always treat like a kid (raise your hand if you know). I was skeptical of how this was all going to go. But by a few hours into the first day, we had settled into a nice routine. My mom drove her car, Uncle Robbie was happy in the back seat, and I loved riding passenger so I could navigate, control the radio, and most importantly, not get car sick. I also love driving, so my mom and I would switch off here and there.
We enjoyed switching between listening to the book on tape (chosen by my mom) and my uncle’s audio book of David Sedaris short stories. I even got to sneak in a Brene Brown/Heather Cox Richardson podcast at one point. I adored staying mostly quiet and hearing my mom’s and uncle’s spontaneous telling of some of their Nova Scotia memories. After all, they both had made this trip many more times than I had. As the 2 youngest siblings in the family, Mom and Uncle Robbie went to visit Patty a lot after she moved, both with and without my grandparents.
Perhaps my favorite part of the whole trip was when we hiked to this waterfall that Uncle Robbie used to swim in when he visited as a kid. My mom is notorious for being able to find these off-the-beaten-path hikes, and this was no exception. Apparently the way they used to access it when they were kids was through someone’s land, and we found out that after years of issues dealing with rude tourists, they no longer made their access public. After doing some research online, Mom found out we had to basically park on the side of the road and hike in, following along the river.
Now, it was early November in Nova Scotia, and the weather was not great for a waterfall river hike. It was cold, and a bit icy, and my uncle had not done a lot of hiking before. Although we started walking along the rocky side of the river, that route would sometimes become impassable, and we’d have to climb up to the higher wooded forest along the bank of the river. We almost turned around multiple times, mostly due to my encouraging (as I’m a volunteer hike leader and just wanted everyone to be safe). I did not want us getting lost or hurt in nearly winter conditions in Canada with no cell reception. Of course we hadn’t really told anyone where we were going (sigh). But slowly and steadily, we crept along. It was not supposed to be a long hike, and so as we rounded every corner, we expected the waterfall to be there. Almost giving up, coming around one last bend, my uncle’s eyes lit up. We were there. It actually was a pretty impressive waterfall compared to what I expected. Mom barely remembered it from when she was a kid, but Uncle Robbie appeared to have it imprinted in his memory. Hearing him retell stories of being there, free as a bird, with no parents, jumping from the top, was a real treat for me. Uncle Robbie lost his wife several years ago, and it had been a long time since I’d seen him that happy. I have a great selfie from the waterfall that helps me relive the memories and bask in his joy every time I look at it.
And of course, there was the party. The Patty Party, as my Uncle Chuck and cousins named it. The party we were all there to attend. As someone who is really particular about planning and paying attention to detail, I thought the party was planned perfectly. You could tell my cousins and uncle had put a lot of thought into how it would go. The Patty Party was really more of a show, and there were 2 performances: one on Friday night and one on Saturday afternoon. They asked folks to only come to one, as it was a small space (remember, tiny meeting house in the center of town), and they wanted everyone who wanted to come to be able to enjoy and have a good time. We went to opening night, of course. From the moment I walked in, it felt magical. The lighting was perfect, the space was gorgeous. I had never seen so many of Patty’s art pieces in one place at one time. They were put up beautifully on display. I was enthralled.
I immediately realized that I had never really looked at Patty’s artwork in detail before. It was a bit abstract and obscure and provocative, with typically a naked body or body parts or non-human looking faces incorporated somewhere. As a kid, I had always shied away from staring at her artwork for too long, as it would make me profoundly uncomfortable (isn’t it funny what we learn at such a young age). So now, with these beautiful pieces I had never seen all in one place, I was entranced. I was especially taken with one piece in particular, on a tapestry, that simply amazed me. There were so many parts to look at. It’s hard to explain, but it just made me happy. Made my whole body hum at a little deeper of a tune. And most importantly of all, there were so many brain elements to it, and my PhD is in neuroscience! For example, there was a perfectly drawn, anatomically correct horizontal brain slice. There were perfectly drawn axons and other brain cells. Oh, how I longed in that moment to be able to talk to Patty, to be able to ask her about her process, to ask what had inspired her to make this piece.
Now, part of the idea behind the party was to showcase Patty’s artwork, to honor her, and to raise money for her favorite charity. A few of the pieces were “for sale,” but all of the proceeds would go to charity. But because Uncle Chuck and my cousins also wanted to showcase her art that had been sitting in her studio for the 10 years since her death, there were some pieces that were labeled NFS (not for sale). The piece I was enthralled with was one of them. So, I didn’t give it a second thought because of course it was NFS – it was amazing. I just wanted to stand there and look at it for as long as I could.
I went about the rest of the evening before the show officially started, meeting and mingling with people who had known Patty and Uncle Chuck since the 70s when they first moved to Canada. It was so wonderful and special being able to share memories about my aunt and hear what she was like before I knew her. So many times I was reminded of small-town Vermont and how much I love my community and want to build it for the rest of my life.
As I conversed and met more and more people, the piece of artwork kept coming up. I kept telling people to go look at it and to look for all the hidden brain messages inside it. I told them how anatomically accurate the brains were and how much it amazed me. At one point I got talking to Uncle Chuck about it, and shared how much I wished I could have talked to Patty about the piece. We shared a wonderful, tearful moment over the artwork and Patty’s memory.
A bit later, as I was chatting with someone else, Uncle Chuck came up to me again and said he had discussed it with his daughters (my cousins) and told me that if I would consider making a $200 donation to the charity, the artwork would be mine. I was absolutely dumfounded, stunned silent. Because the artwork had been listed NFS, I didn’t even consider the possibility. I just loved looking at it and talking about it. I knew how incredibly special it was, when my uncle made me that offer. I hadn’t asked, so he’d gone out of his way to think about my having it. I imagine they of course didn’t want to part with one of Patty’s best and most prized pieces, but I imagined that they wanted it to stay in the family and also honor her work and her favorite charity. I really couldn’t believe they were even considering it. The polite-girl conditioning ingrained in me wanted me to say, “oh, I couldn’t possibly” or “thank you for the offer, but I could never.” The words almost came tumbling out before I could stop them. But I knew my uncle wouldn’t have offered it if he didn’t mean it.
I could easily afford it, but where would I put it? I wouldn’t take it home if I didn’t have somewhere special to put it. And then it hit me like an ocean wave, peacefully washing over me.
My meditation table. In my last blog post, I wrote about embracing the slow. Well, setting up my meditation space has been a goal of mine for soooo long. I had the perfect space, but then I needed the perfect table. It took Mr. Dink years, but he finally brought my vision to life and built me a table as a Christmas present this year. I’d been waiting to officially set up the table the way I wanted it, because I first wanted to have the perfect piece to go on the wall above the table. I had thought about buying a tapestry or something, but I just hadn’t pulled the trigger because I couldn’t visualize exactly what I wanted to fill the space. Patty’s artwork was the missing piece.
Before the show started, I found my uncle and told him I couldn’t be happier about his offer. I would take it.
The rest of the night was more pure magic. I let my mom and uncle sit in the 2 reserved seats in the front row, so that I could watch from the back, alone. I watched in silent awe as my cousins, who I used to play in the sand with and who have grown into incredible women, showcased their talents. I watched my eldest cousin do a poetry reading from her chapbook, including several poems about Patty. I watched my closest, younger cousin play the drums in the band she’s been a part of for the last several years. The lead singer was also her best friend, and had written a beautiful song in honor of Patty. I was surrounded by love and beauty and family, and I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
The next day, we got even more family time. We went to brunch with Uncle Chuck and his partner. We went on a snowy hike with Uncle Chuck’s brother (the only other family member who’d made the trip from the states) during the second Patty Party performance. And then we went to help our family clean up, and take down the whole exhibit of Patty’s artwork. The weekend was over in a whirlwind, but everyone was so happy we’d come. And so were we.
It was late in the day when all was wrapped up, and my cousin had to start the 2-hour drive back to Halifax so she could get to work the next morning. Even so, she came to our Airbnb before she left so she could get some extra time with us. And that was where I realized something so important. As much as I loved her, and wished I was the one she’d leaned on as she grieved her mother, she had needed my mom during this phase. And she needed my mom now. My mom and cousin had grown immensely closer since Patty’s death, and in that moment, it all made complete sense to me. My mom was Patty’s closest sibling, and she was also the last blood reminder of Patty that my cousin could cling to. Instead of being bummed and resentful, I got to sit back and watch the glow of my mom and cousin supporting each other.
The next morning, my mom and Uncle Robbie and I started the long journey back to Vermont. I was painstakingly careful with my piece of Patty’s art. It was so delicate, and I didn’t want it to get warped or to crinkle during the car ride, so I unrolled it each night to let it lay flat, before rolling it up again the next morning for the drive.
And finally, after hanging for a while on a curtain rod in my living room so Mr. Dink and guests could enjoy it for a few days too, Patty’s piece is in its final resting place. It’s in my room, my office, hanging above my meditation table. Even though I may not be able to talk to Patty in the flesh, I now feel like I can talk to her every day if I want, through her artwork.
For $200 to charity and the price of meals for me and my mom*, I received memories that will last a lifetime, and a piece of Patty that will stay with me always and light me up every time I see it. The best money I spent in 2024.
*A quick note on spending for this trip (since this is a personal finance blog, after all). Since Mom was going to go on this trip no matter what, she drove her car and booked and paid for all the Airbnbs we stayed in. Uncle Robbie convinced her to let him pay for all the gas, and I convinced her to let me pay for all her meals. Totally worth it to me.
I’d love to hear from you! What was your favorite purchase of 2024? Let me know in the comments, or email me at [email protected].