Allison Louise

I've been living with my parents, and it has been seriously lovely - they've always been great roommates, and perhaps even more so now that I'm an adult. I mean, home cooked meals?! I'm sure I've gained at least 10 pounds since moving back into this house.

Anywho, yesterday my mom and I were moving some things around the house, and I discovered that my mother is a towel hoarder. I mean, of all the things she could hoard, chocolate, puppies, photos of my childhood (of which there is only one small photo album, in comparison to my brothers five (at least) large ones), she has chosen to hoard towels.

At first I thought they were just located in the downstairs bathroom, but as I started throwing her towels away, I found that there were others located in the laundry room, and out on the deck (we have a swimming pool, geesh), and in the upstairs cupboard, and in our old broken down sauna. And I'm not talking just a towel here or there, I'm talking at LEAST 10 towels per location-- in some instances, like the sauna, there were much, MUCH more.

I told my mom that this was an intervention, and she was not happy that I had found her towel stash.

I texted this picture to my sister:

and she replied: "quick! Throw them out while she's not looking! She's probably has plans to make a scrap towel quilt or something."

I read the text out loud to my mom and we laughed so hard that we cried.

And in that moment I was so glad to be home. So glad to be spending time with my mom, and to have my dad right upstairs, and to know that my sister and brother-in-law and nieces are just down the road.

And we all get each other in this weird sort of way that nobody else really gets me, and nobody else really gets them. 

It reminds me of this little snippet of writing that I came across on Hey Natalie Jean found here.

"i think i must have forgotten a lot how much i need my sisters. or my parents. or my baby brother, even. i forget how much i just need somebody with that funny weird mix of lovin in them to remind me how all the parts inside of me are supposed to work, and why i am how i am, and why exactly that can be so great in its own silly way. does that make sense? having alex here has reminded me to take a lot of stuff less seriously, to take a lot of other stuff more seriously, to feel comfort in our shared quirks that i'd otherwise roll my eyes at myself for, and all around to breathe a little deeper and laugh much, much louder."

It is hard to be away from the amazing community I had in Victoria, but this family stuff, it wins.