Don
Many years ago, I moved to California to be away from Las Cruces (and Amy) and also to get cash money, experience, and to hang out with my brother.  See, when I was 15 my brother fucked off to the Marine Corps, and when he subsequently came back (after getting injured and gaining a medical discharge) he fucked off to California.  He drove out there in that stupid little blue Pinto that I've written about, and lived with my dad, stepmonster, and two evil stepsisters (one his age, one a little older than I) in Stockton.  Stockton!  Ugly, hot, tip-of-the-valley, delta-laden, agricultural / industrial Stockton, filled with Vietnamese gangs and indifference.  Stockton, where I caught myself on fire one summer.  Stockton, where my brother and I cruised the drag in his 1976 280z.

Thankfully the whole damn family moved to Santa Rosa, then the kids moved out and on and my dad and the stepmom moved to Sebastopol, then finally to Dillon Beach where I landed on their weary shore.

I'd visited off and on during the entire process, watching my brother go native.  He eventually turned into the sort of Californian that most of the state of Texas loves to hate: ultra-left politically, laid back, ready to snap at a moments notice.  For my brother, staying on in Santa Rosa was mainly the result of Kim.

I met Kim for the first time at about the same moment that I met my nephew, their son Chris.  He was, I think, less than a year old the first time I met him.  My brother and his wife and son picked me up at a bus terminal after a harrowing 30 hour bus ride through the depths of the worst sort of America.  It was a Vacation for me, my first as a working man.  I'd brought an electric guitar along (for effect, I guess) and a Kelty pack big enough to move in to.

The bus journey had started in Las Cruces at 4:30am, much to the consternation of every single passenger on the bus, all of them angry, tired, and hateful at having to stop and pick up a big Biker-looking JesusBeard like myself.  It was full except for one seat.  Now, think about it.  Why is there one empty seat?  What are the odds that it's a pleasant seat next to a polite old lady who wants only to sleep until LA?  The odds of that, friends, is about the same as the odds of me winning a lottery I don't play.  The guy I sat next to, on top of being drunk, kept violently waking and offering me weed, a drink from a flask that didn't exist, and an ass-kicking.

Hollywood bus terminal 24 hours later, some guy tried to steal my guitar.  A guy drew my portrait for five bucks.  I slept fitfully.  Another 15 hours and I was in the Bay Area and then to my brother, in the cold and damp, where he, his wife, his 1965 Dodge Dart, and his Son all waited.

That's a strange moment.  I'd been away from the family...any family, including the ones that lived very close to me...for so long that I was a stranger, from a strange land.  My brother ha d a wife and kid and a life that I was not even close to a part of.  It put me off.  The meeting was a bit strange for Kim as well.  She was nervous, had heard my brother rant and rave about the great times we'd had, about how close we were, and I'm sure he oversold me.  So Kim was intimidated, and I was tired and needed a bed, a pack of smokes, and a liter of whiskey.

Kim had nothing to worry about.  She had this wonderful sarcastic sense of humor, and after a short delay started treating me like a brother.  For a girl raised with four brothers, she could easily hold her own.  We got on pretty well.

That very evening we went to Kim's parent's house, which was sort of south of town near 101.  There I was: scruffy and unkempt and very quiet,  my head still bussing it's way to me, delayed by the half-century of de-evolution I'd witnessed on the way up, and I was going to meet my brother's in-laws.  Seemed like a bad move to me.

But they made me feel like family immediately.  Her dad, a good ol' boy who just happened to be in northern California instead of the South, was immediately welcoming.  he was like an uncle I'd always known.  He included me instantly in the conversations and jokes.  He was just the sort of friendly guy, didn't care who you were.  Just, nice.  Laughed a lot.  Smoked a fair bit of herb.  Great conversations, good food, and goofy stories.  That day sticks with me, it was such a relief.

My brother, over time, grew closer to Kim's family...maybe a question of geography, what with me being a whole country away and my dad being across the bay.  My dad and my brother don't get along as well as they should, and when he and my stepmother divorced, things got worse.  But my brother was enveloped, accepted by Kim's family, and is very much an important part of it.  And that means more to me than I can express, knowing that my brother is, no matter what, with a family who loves him, a family that helped raise my nephew.

Years after my first ever visit to California, I moved up there and spent quite a bit of time at my brother's house. I got to meet her brothers and her parents again, and it was like I'd never left after my first visit.  They're just a very welcoming bunch.

I didn't get to see Kim's family that much (except for her brother Jason), but Kim is the perfect example of what they're like: they're warm.  They're inclusive, and funny, and ribald. They remind me of my mom's family, boisterous and passionate.  They know disaster and pain well enough to know what joy can come from a simple day.  If Kim is the product of that then her father was the source of it.

Many years on, her father and I met out here in the intertubes, and he was so instantly loving and friendly that it's like I was still in California.  The guy never changed his heart.

I do wish I'd known him better. See, he died just last week.  He had been poorly for a while, and one of his sons had gone to visit him, and he was feeling pretty bad so they left for the hospital.  He lost consciousness en route, and they weren't able to revive him.  There at the end, my brother and Kim were trying to get the family together, to make that decision about respirators and chances of survival when he made the decision for them.

He was a goofy, funny guy, and more important he brought Kim into the world, and helped shape his grandkids.  And he accepted my brother as one of his own, my brother who is now as much a member of Kim's family as he ever will be of mine.  He had my brother's respect and love, and I know that doesn't come cheap or easy.

This world, disparate and maddening and filled with every sort of thing, was only made brighter by his influence, and is just a shade darker now.