My friend Chris wanted to know who was going to be around this weekend to get together “before everyone ripcords for the holidays.” Ripcord, I thought. That’s a new one, but I get it. It’s that moment during free fall when you decide to pull the chute open. Starting a new life in a place like Park City does feel a bit like the exhilaration and terror of a free fall. The plane door opens and you catch your breath just before leaping into the void. Unable to sense gravity, you simply descend, weightless. For those of us who arrive here without family, history or infrastructure, we operate in a similar kind of weightlessness. We exist in a constant state of thrill and vulnerability. Choosing a place before it chooses us, we’re never quite sure how it’s all going to land. I first came to Park City in 2020 knowing just one friend from my hometown. Matt was the one who helped me find a place in town where I stayed for a couple of months to suss it out. He introduced me to my first friend group. He had family here, and they treated me like one of their own. He was my emergency contact. He made me feel at home. So when Matt moved to Jackson Hole recently, it was a bittersweet acknowledgement of the impermanence of family — the one you’re born into, or the ones you create. Belonging doesn’t come with guarantees. The night Matt left town, I rewatched the film “The Brothers McMullen,” an indie romcom which coincidentally premiered at Sundance in 1995. It’s the story of three Irish Catholic brothers who temporarily move back into the house they grew up in as they wrestle with love, relationships and what it means to be family. It reminded me that in the family you’re born into, togetherness is often most meaningful only after we’ve fled the nest. What I wouldn’t give for just one Christmas morning gathered with my siblings on the stairs of our family home, waiting for our parents to give the go-ahead to descend. Adulthood scatters many of us. In my case, it’s a brother in Maine, a sister in western New York and me in Utah. The holidays are the moment when a longing for family reveals itself most intensely. So we create new families and new traditions out of the people we meet and places we inhabit. A sense of purpose and belonging grows from shared experiences, not just shared DNA. Being on our own helps us notice when someone else might need to be gathered in. Are you ready for Christmas? becomes gentle subtext for Do you have a place to go? Here in Park City, family has found me in the most unassuming ways. I miss seeing my mother, who lives back in Rochester, but I now have a group of 80-somethings — the “Wild Women,” with whom I have dinner once a month. We sit around a dining table, share stories and wine and check in on one another in a way that feels like home. The Wild Women make the distance between me and my own mother feel smaller. The Crossfit class I go to at Park City Fit has become a daily touchstone — a place where I’m known, expected and missed if I don’t show up. For a person like me who works mostly alone in a quiet studio, the camaraderie makes the shared suffering of endless rounds of burpee pull-ups and kettlebell thrusters feel almost like fun. The same is true on the mountain. Friends who wait for you at the top even on a pow day, who text to ski tomorrow and who give you a hard time when you say you have to work. All of these small gestures have a way of snowballing into something as sturdy and true as real family. During the holidays, these gestures feel even more meaningful. Friends reach out, extend invitations, make time for coffee or a glass of wine after work — the random acts of kindness that let you know you’re not alone. In these moments, a chosen family becomes visible, not as a replacement for the one you’re born into, but as an extension of it. Living proof that you can live with your family wherever you are. The other night, I queued up some holiday tunes and took my ornament box out of the closet. I hung the ornaments one by one on a small tabletop tree from Whole Foods, many of them handed down from my mom when I moved out west. The little tree looked like it might topple over from the weight of all those family memories. One of the last ornaments I pulled from the box was a ceramic heart my sister sent me a few years ago. It depicts the outlines of Maine, New York and Utah and is inscribed with the words: Side by side or miles apart, families will always be close at heart. I held the heart in my hand for a moment before placing it on the tree, suspended in its own kind of free fall, oblivious to the forces of gravity and distance, no ripcord necessary. The post Betty Diaries: Side by side or miles apart appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less