Tomorrow, Friday July 22nd, 2016 I will board a plane and fly to LAX. I’m going down for the weekend to attend a family reunion. For most of my life my whole family (grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and more) lived in the same county in Southern California. However, slowly over the years folks started to move farther and farther away. By the time I was graduating high school, my mom and step-dad were about to move across the country to Texas and my aunt was moving to Montana. But California remains home base for us. While I’ve made several trips back home since starting Reed College in the fall of 2013, I haven’t seen much of my extended family in years.

I’m really looking forward to seeing my family this weekend but I’m even more excited to surprise them with my visit. Only my mom and step-dad know that I’m coming down for the reunion. The rest of my family knows that I’m participating in the summer documentary program and understood when I told them I probably wouldn’t make it down to see them due to our busy schedule here. Hopefully, they’ll forgive my little white lie.

I’m lucky enough to have access to a Zoom recorder this weekend which I’m going to use to record my journey to my hometown, the sounds of surprising my family, and hopefully even get some interviews with my family members. I’ve always loved the idea of doing an oral history project of my family and now that I’ve gained some skills in audio recording and editing I want to start the first small bit of that task. I firmly believe that everyone’s story deserves to be told and that as storytellers we have a responsibility to tell the stories that we feel inspired by. No one inspires me more than my family. Stay tuned for the finished audio piece of my trip.

-Frankie