After you grow up, it seems that you only get together with your family once in a blue moon. Marriage, kids, and careers fill the days which eventually turn into years, all slipping by faster than feels possible. But last Saturday when the super "perigee moon" appeared I finally reunited with my mother and siblings.

The last time my mom, brother, and sister and I were together for a happy occasion was June 1980 for my sister's wedding. December of that year, my brother enlisted in the Army and spent the next ten years in Germany.

For the most part, my siblings missed my formative years because I was what you might call a "bonus baby." When I came along my sister was already 14 ½ and my brother was 12. We were all together in 1985 when my Dad had a heart attack, but those were tense times. We reconvened again in December 2006 when he was dying, and as one might expect, things were said that shouldn't have been. When he finally passed away in April 2007, we attended the funeral with the families we had made for ourselves, and each of us turned to them for comfort.

It wasn't until the fall of 2010 when I had a pulmonary embolism that I realized I just wanted one adult memory with my siblings when we weren't distressed. I saw that there would be a "Black politics" conference an hour from where they lived, and grabbed the opportunity. I invited my brother, my sister, and our mom to join me for lunch.

Family dynamics have a way of being ingrained, and I had forgotten an old one that was pretty sweet. When we all lived at home I was "the baby." This meant that I was immune to the rivalry that existed between my siblings and they were both pretty kind to me.

Over the years our relationships changed and the "baby status" had been replaced with, "Who does she think she is?" But I was able to put that aside, maybe because I was in a good place emotionally. I don't know if it was the embolism, the slow and painful death of a dear friend to cancer, or just the fact that by now we all had bifocals; but we were good to each other on Saturday. We listened to each others' stories and learned about the life experiences that we hadn't shared.

My brother brought his daughter, who is now the age I was in 1980. Looking at her reminded me of how we used to be. The visit was only two hours, and when my Mom climbed into the car, she said to me "Bye, Baby." My sister-in-law giggled, "Baby?!??!." I laughed and said, it's like that Helen Reddy song, "She's 41 and her Momma still calls her baby." I stood there waiving as they pulled away.

I now have one good adult memory with my family of origin. With my people, you only get that once in a perigee moon.