A Happy Reunion

A year ago today my younger brother Parker and I were on a plane headed across the Atlantic Ocean to spend 10 days with our big brother. I hope that you will not mind as over the coming days I recount what I remember from our experiences on that trip. I do not intend for this to read like a mandatory slide show of grandpa's photos but will concede that some of my memories of the trip are seemingly insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Ironically though it is these hundreds of "insignificant" moments over Jamin's lifetime that I have found myself grasping onto for dear life as the bigger, more "significant" moments of his life cease to be made.

Parks and I had just sat down on our connecting flight in Newark when I went to turn my phone off before departure. What I saw was the following text from Jamin: "I'm so stoked to see you guys!" - It was so "Jamin"! I smiled as I settled in for the flight thinking what a great brother was waiting for us on the other side of the big blue.

Once we made it through customs in Frankfurt we rolled our bags through a pair of double doors with greeting parties on the other side. I didn't even have to look for Jamin - my eyes went straight to him as he quickly rose from his seat in his bright yellow t-shirt and bounded towards us in a "not-quite-a-run" but "definitely-not-walking" manner. Its amazing how you can lose all sense of what is around you when you are excited to see someone. I'm sure we were blocking the doors but it didn't really matter. His hug was definitely one to remember!

On the way out of the airport I remember Jamin pointing out how smart the Germans are to indicate in their parking structures where the free spaces are by way of lighting indicators. (Oh how I had missed these stimulating topics). That thought seemed to spark a long conversation between Jamin and Parker on the 2 hour ride back to his apartment about how if the world could just have one big meeting (a simple idea in Jamin's opinion) about some of the best ideas from each country we would all be better off.

After dropping the bags off at Jamin's apartment we went for lunch at his favorite local eatery where we learned that Jamin could in fact add "German" to his conversational language list.

Back at the apartment we spent a good bit of the afternoon on Jamin's "great new" computer as he and Parker shared their love of old school music. Parker would pull up a song and in response came Jamin's exclamation "Oh man Parker - that's a good one!" as he tapped along with his index fingers on the desk (eyes closed of course) - if you knew Jamin you will appreciate this image. Somehow or another that evolved into taking silly pictures of ourselves on his photobooth application. It was a great time of just being together and re-familiarizing ourselves with Jamin's silly but ever-so-endearing mannerisms.

Parker eventually fell asleep and Jamin and I had the daunting task of prematurely waking him from his nap. He tried lines such as "Parker, man you've gotta wake up - there is so much awesomeness to be had " but they just weren't working. So, Jamin went off to make Hot Chocolate (the real kind with chocolate melted in milk) thinking that this clever motherly maneuver might just do the trick.

Both Jamin and I saw that it was clearly not going to be enough to simply wake Parker - we had to find a way to keep him awake so Jamin got the bright idea to go go-carting. Nothing like an adrenaline rush to beat Jet lag! A twenty minute drive turned into into a little over thirty minutes when Jamin got on the autobahn going the wrong direction and I had to giggle about some directionally challenged adventures in the past. As much as I loved to tease him about this one imperfection I admired his admission when we turned around eventually ended up exiting the autobahn two exits down from where we had originally entered; "Well - its good to know that could have been a much shorter trip if I had gone the right direction." Ha, ha . . . silly brother. The go-carts were of course the "fastest things ever!"

Back at the apartment we prepared for dinner. Jamin had it all planned out. In fact before we left the US I asked him if there was anything American that we could bring over for him. He had two requests 1) Extra - winterfresh "chewing gum" (as he called it) in the small 5 sticks per pack (because the 25 sticks per pack that they sold in Germany were too big to fit in his pocket) and 2) a mortar and pestle for "grinding things."

Jamin had been waiting and waiting to get a mortar and pestle so that he could try this new recipe. He had even driven 20 minutes to a specialty Asian food store to pick out all of the ingredients. I guess in the end it was worth it though because after an hour in the making it turned out to be "The tastiest meal ever!"

1 day enjoyed - 9 more to go!