Coffee For Four: Epilogue

So, the coffee thing went well. I was much relieved. There was a bit of awkward at first, but my aunt, who's awful sweet, totally ignored that and just started talking with everybody like there had never been any drama at all. Kudos, aunt.

We hung out at the coffee shop for a good two hours, and I got all kinds of news from Ohio about what my aunt's been up to and about my cousins. Sadly, not all good news, one of my cousins has gotten into a relationship with a bad-news kind of guy. A guy, unfortunately, very like her father, a.k.a. my aunt's ex-husband. She made some comments about him in spots, and I got to understand more about that whole situation than I did before - she and the ex split while I was still too young to really understand things like domestic abuse.

At one point, while my uncle was in the restroom, she leaned in toward my mom and said something about that rough time, "I remember those three a.m. phone calls. Thank God you were on the other end." In that moment, I could really see how sad they were that the family issues had distanced them. These women used to be tight, and today was the first time they'd talked to each other in at least a year. Judging by how they were acting, it seemed like all my relatives missed each other.

Today it seemed like coffee could be first step in moving on from the past . I hope so.