The cluster of hours in which our clan was together in the mountains last week scored high marks for nostalgia. The meals were savory and sweet, with my oldest daughter and I noticing that we both brought cinnamon. Nutmeg. Oranges. Butter in abundance. Popcorn.

A small table was relegated for a Norman Rockwell thousand piece puzzle of a girl with a black eye sitting outside the principal's office. Who did not seem at all repentant I might add. Often there were four heads bowed over it including Benjamin's who surprised me with his ability to find homes for oddly shaped cardboard. 

We played charades, and In the Manner of the Word. I am told that when I yanked a blanket off my children's lap to don it as a cape and then picked up a set of antlers to use as a crown, the adverb I was trying to embody became obvious. 

But there were moments, bleeding into minutes, when the feelings flew fast. With fifteen people in one confined space it was sometimes less like a Hallmark card and more like a topographical map of the Andes.

Still no one came to blows. Tears and hot words to be sure, yet a week later they seem to deserve their place in the puzzle of family dynamics too. It is not my expectation that we sift out only those parts of ourselves that are photogenic, though there were a slew of perfectly lovely panoramas shot. What moves me is that we brought our real selves, even the bruised parts. And even though we are admittedly odd, we too can fit in.

Plus I don't feel an ounce of guilt.