Seattle: The Preview

We vowed never to take a picture together without a fish. Luckily Scott had this in his garage.

People are always shocked to discover I have five brothers and sisters. Two brothers and three sisters, to be exact. Four older and one younger. Much, much older. The oldest, Scott, is "exactly 20 years older than Lauren" according to my mom, which makes him...48. 48! How did this happen? We're like the Brady Bunch with his, hers, and ours, only "ours" was an awesome accident (me) and my almost-as-awesome, planned little sister, Lauren.

My brothers and sisters are amazing. My parents got lucky with all of their kids, and I got lucky to have them as siblings. I remember my sister Raelin used to visit us when I was just old enough to walk and talk, and I would cry every time she left. Raelin was the kind of sister who snuck Lauren and me into the public library with french fries tucked into our backpacks so we could read and snack for hours in the book stacks.

My sister Lara was one of the few people Lauren and I could get to play games with us. We used to go to her house for the weekend and play cards and board games for hours.

Jeff is my youngest older brother. He used to give Lauren and me rewards for good grades, which was about the only way we made any money since formal "chores" weren't a thing in our household. (Before you call us spoiled, recall that we grew up on a farm. A FARM. We collected eggs every day and mucked actual shit on the weekends.) Jeff was also the one who told me I should grow up to be a lawyer, which resulted in me going to law school 15 years later and telling Lauren to go to law school, too. (Jeff, we can discuss your poor life decisions later.)

Scott is my oldest older brother. When he was younger, Scott used to work on commercial fishing boats for months at a time and would come home to visit with pictures and videos of vast ships and massive piles of fish, and his deck uniform: a yellow, waterproof suit and rubber boots. Naturally I got into this uniform and posed for pictures as quickly as I could when I was about 8 years old and cute like that. For the past several years, Scott, Lauren and I have vacationed together in La Paz, Mexico. We eat, laugh, and fish for an entire week, gain 100 pounds each and go home with ice chests full of fish on the plane like it's normal.

Lauren and Scott took the same vow.

All of my brothers and sisters came to visit me when I was going through treatment for cancer. Raelin and Lauren missed maybe two chemo infusions between the two of them. Scott spent an entire weekend with me watching House of Cards and eating Mexican food.

It came time to pay it forward this past weekend. About a month ago, Scott had a heart attack. He was smart enough to realize what was happening, and got himself to an emergency room where they promptly got him to cardiac specialists, who in turn performed an emergency quadruple bypass. My family loves each other like crazy. I can't tell you how happy we are that Scott's okay.

And he's more than okay! He said cacao to heart attacks, I said cacao to cancer, and Scott, Lauren and I did what we do best: ate, laughed, and - well, since we couldn't fish, we just ate some more. More on that later!

A little preview of the next post. A cocktail from Bon Appetit's Top 10 restaurants list!