I took a road trip to Charlottesville, Virginia this past weekend with my half-sister Jennifer and most of her children to meet our biological half-brother, Jeffrey, and his family. This was all made possible by his wife. Jennifer picked me up on the way from Charlotte, NC, where she lives on Friday morning and drove all of us to Jeffrey's house where his wife was hosting their annual “Crab Fest” gathering. This was the first and only large social event I've been to in two years. I really didn't know what I was was walking into but I was assured that everyone was vaccinated and Covid-screened before the party. The singular exception to all precautions was Jennifer's oldest son, who refuses to be vaccinated but had been tested recently. He was perfectly willing to take his chances. This was the first time I met Steven and his wife, Guadalupe.
There were six of us altogether. We were all piled into Jennifer's car with one person always volunteering to curl up in the back. We shared a room at the local Hilton in Charlottesville that was just two miles from thier house. Just like a DragonCon weekend, I thought.
A crowded gathering seemed like a good idea for a first-meeting with the least amount of stress because, if things felt awkward, we could just fade into the crowd and amuse ourselves on food and mingling. This was a very casual seafood boil party - paper spread on folding tables with piles of boiled crabs, wooden mallets, and pans of corn on the cob and roasted potatoes. I met all of their family and several very lovely friends of theirs. Jeffrey and I got along well and actually had a good conversation on shared interests in music and books. Our first in-person conversation was fun and actually very relaxing. It dispelled a lot of the anxiety, mostly his, about meeting us and we agreed to talk again later. Most of the younger people kept their face on their mobile phones, engrossed in a Pokemon event going on all weekend.
All of the family members met for breakfast the next morning at Michael's Diner. That gave us some quality time together before we were back on the road to North Carolina.
