return

Once a year growing up, I’d head up to Hendersonville, NC to spend a week with my broader family on my mom’s side (and sometimes my dad’s). We’re back again this year with more family in tow than usual. The setting is a beautiful property with a lake, hiking trails, cabins, and small children roaming. I can walk outside the front door of our cabin, wait to hear the screen door slam so specifically, and typically stumble into someone who is related to me within a 15 minute stroll. There’s both structure to the days and none at all. You could spend 6 hours wood carving or jump from walking to playing tennis to diving into the lake. I can already feel myself missing the small hands of my cousins coming up to tap my shoulder and get my attention or sometimes just crawling all over me. I’ll miss my smallest cousins, the ones I can hold in my two hands, cuddling close and squirming. I’ll miss hearing about the teenagers and how they’re getting on, realizing these same conversations likely happened on the same path about me with different generations years prior (although they likely still do happen).

I’ve been going here since I was born and today I talked with a woman who has a trans son who refuses to return. A Christian organization runs the group (Episcopalians) and he rightfully doesn’t want anything to do with it. Each time I return, somehow feeling queerer than the year before, I feel it. The woman has been coming for 60 years and I asked if she has ever seen a LGBTQ+ family attend. Her answer was a quick “no”. I return to the stares of some folks here and I return to the warm embrace of my cousins. I return with new discomfort that thankfully for now can’t override the deep longing my soul has for what this place brings. It’s messy yet I remember the young queer kid who saw me as a queer adult and knew she was welcome here too. I remember her dad breaking into tears telling me about it. I saw her yesterday, still coming and still feeling welcome.