A family get-together over the mountains in Santa Cruz this evening. There are millions of people in the Bay Area on the other side of the coastal range from the beach areas and three narrow, windy routes through those mountains and it was the longest Saturday of the year. So we gave ourselves an extra two hours to be on the safe side because we didn’t want to miss the cousin’s son’s celebration.

By taking some back routes somehow we found ourselves right there with those two hours to kill.

I pointed out San Lorenzo Nursery to Michelle as we drove past, where our fig, sour cherry, mandarin and the last peach tree had come from, making me very fond of the place.

She got to show off her favorite spot in town, named, simply, Chocolate.

Hammered copper around the truffle display, really, really good hot chocolate that came with a cookie to hold the cream to stir in as you desire, a mermare, that antique register with the sea star–quirky, fun, and very Santa Cruz.

And the food! A chicken bacon sandwich sounds humble but even the refrigerated leftovers were achingly good hours later. Those people know how to cook.

The family time: the young man we were celebrating had just turned eight, a big deal when you’re a Mormon, the age when you’re considered beginning to be able to understand right or wrong and to actively make choices as to how you’re going to respond to what life brings you.

And when we humans make choices we sometimes make wrong ones, and so the need for faith, repentance and renewal, with baptism to start the process. And he had chosen to be baptized.

He’s also a fairly shy kid. When we got there, he was seated by himself a moment so I sat down on the floor so as to be looking up at him. This was his day and I wanted him to have that viewpoint of being the tall one–a rare thing when you’re a kid.

Just then his three-year-old cousin and her parents came in at the other end of the long room, and as her daddy told me later, she cried in delight, “That’s my FRIEND!” as she bolted towards me, jumped into my lap and flung herself into my arms and wrapped her own as far around me as she could reach in the biggest hug you could ever hope for.

I felt about ten feet tall. That moment will carry me through a whole lot to come.

It’s all about being there for each another.

And a little child led the way.