Postcard 015 - Together
The past few days were overwhelming in the best way.
This is the second year in a row that I've celebrated my birthday by getting a group of my closest friends together for an extended weekend/vacation. While this impetus for the gathering is a birthday, the goal is to create enough surface area between them that each of them can discover firsthand what I appreciate about the others.
I told a friend that the best gift for me throughout the weekend was seeing each of them interacting — sharing stories, laughing, hanging out , etc — without me. Watching your friends develop their own relationships with each other is a beautiful thing, and group events like this tend to help speedrun trust in a good way.
The trip had one "official" plan (besides "be together"), which was an opt in wine tasting. Given that we were in Northern California and a number of us enjoy wine, it felt like the Goldilocks zone of just enough structure to be worth getting out of the house for, but not so structured that we had to turn off vacation mode.
We ended up at Raymond Vineyards, one of the only spots that would fit a group of our size (and a place a few friends had been to before). To say the tasting room/cellar was unique would be an understatement, as I felt like I walked into the prop closet for a cabaret or Panic! At The Disco music video (not a bad thing, I still play A Fever You Can't Sweat Out on a regular basis).
While we commented on the decor and even took a few photos, the novelty wore off quickly and it felt like being back at the house together, just with much different lighting. To me, this underscored the fact that being together with good people often transcends the surroundings. Whether we were all sitting poolside or cellar-side, the important thing was that we were there, together.
I hope that amid life's twists and turns, in the coming years and regardless of setting, we can continue to convene to celebrate and remember that.