Twenty-seven?  Or has it been twenty-nine?

I can’t remember which of those numbers is accurate, but either way, it’s been a LOT of years that my family has been celebrating the fourth of July with my framily.

It was just an idea a couple of decades ago.  A casual “let’s have dinner together on July Fourth” sort of plan between a handful of families who lived near one another in the glorious state of Virginia surrounded by the ever inviting Blue Ridge Mountains.

But over the years it has become a staple on the calendar.  A must do.  A can’t miss event.  It’s part reunion and part party.  It’s a giant dinner and a fireworks show and, of course, a mildly intense game of kickball with far too many people on each team.  (This year Emma and I were commissioned as captains and the pressure was almost unbearable.  But we still did better with the picking and choosing on the kickball field than we did the year we tried to get ourselves commissioned on the fireworks committee.  That decision went down smoking.)

I love the farm.  I love Virginia.  I love the mountains.  I love the July Fourth party.  I love the porch.  I love the way Otto can go fishing every single day.  (He beat his own record – I think it’s currently standing at 45 fish caught in one single day.)

I love the way the kids play together.  I love that Ryder adores the farm.  (And that he looks so cute in a bandana.)

I like driving the backroads in Virginia too.  Feeling right at home and listening to my Franklin County soundtrack – which sounded great, by the way, with the windows down and the sunroof open and the only thing I regret about that twenty minute drive was the massive tangles that it wrought in my hair.  The funny thing about driving backroads that are at once familiar and yet haven’t been driven by you in a year’s time is the opportunity to notice the big changes, the subtle changes and the never changes.  On one road it’s the house that is getting a brand new front porch after decades of the same facade.  It’s driving by the house where a man named Cutie lived and wondering if he is still living there after all these years.  It’s stopping at the gas station that surely has an official name but we’ve always only ever called it by the name of the man who owns the store.

The farm makes you feel both young and old simultaneously.  It’s chock full of nostalgia and good memories and childhood stories and tales and remember when.  You feel kind of like a kid yourself when you sit on the steps and watch the field, aimlessly looking for anything that catches your eye.   And then you feel old when you realize that your kids don’t even need you to watch them.  That they’re driving the Gator by themselves and they’re in charge of making a dessert for dinner and they watch the younger kids and they sleep in a barn by themselves and it used to be all hands on deck, everyone look out for the toddlers and keep the young ones away from the electric fence.  And this season it’s a little more like I guess everyone is fine because I haven’t seen any of the kids since early morning and we’re guessing they’ll all appear again when they’re hungry so let’s just have some tea and read a novel, shall we?

It took some time to make it from one stage to the next and it’s always surprising when you find yourself at the next step without having had much time to notice when the first phase ended.

But the farm is always always always a good place to be.

And although the mountains are indeed beautiful and the stars shine more brightly without any city lights to dim their glow, the charm of Gray Mountain most assuredly rests within the people who live at the farm and who visit the farm and who come ambling down the long gravel driveway year after year after year.

In the words of one of those guys sporting a mullet on my Franklin County playlist, “It’s a great day to be alive, I know the sun’s still shining when I close my eyes . . . . why can’t every day be just this good?”

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