... My cousin Pam asked during last Friday's Family Reunion. THIS was the evening-after-Thanksgiving gathering of some hundred or so relatives and in-laws from my maternal grand-parents' family. The occasion was our more or less annual get-together. Cousin Jenny and husband Ray again offered the spacious Family Room of their home for the evening.
It was a well-fed crowd . . . continuing the talents of my grand-mother, there are many excellent cooks among her progeny. My personal favorite remains Aunt Rachel's Chicken and Dumplings. When I arrived, a couple of my cousins told me that had her delicacy arrived before I, they had intended to hide them from me. "Thanks" guys !
Rachel is the only one of my grand-parents children still with us. She and Uncle Lewis's widow, Ivy Marie, remain a cherished link to other times and people. Not unlike many of their contemporaries, our grand-parents had many children . . .12. Of those, ten grew to adulthood; one was a World War II casualty; the oldest daughter's only child was still-born. The other eight provided 24 first cousins. Two of those are deceased, one having died just a couple of months ago. Eighteen of the remaining twenty-two were present, along with spouses, children, and grand's. My own two living children had to be elsewhere. (My daughter and her family were en route home after a several day visit with us.)
Not surprisingly, there is a wide age span among the cousins . . .78 to 48. (Good grief ! In writing that , I realized that some of us are old enough to be the parents of others of us !) Six of us were born during or pre-World War II. So, several of my cousins belong to the "Baby Boom" generation. Clarice's daughter, Mona, orchestrated photographing the various groupings within the family. Given the census, that endeavor took several minutes.
Cousin Roy (of hiding the dumplings plot) gave us his annual gift of Birthday/Anniversary/Pictures calendar. Over the years these have become treasured repositories of photographs of the "dearly departed". This year he added some statistics . . . 243 birthdays and 54 wedding anniversaries are included in the current edition; of those, only 24 actually have our Grand-pa's surname and two others have it as their first or middle name; attendees' ages ranged from 90 years to one month. And, he added, "the most interesting fact …most of us still speak to each other".
A lot of good stories were told . . . and retold. My oldest cousin Clarice told some about me that I could have sworn were fabrications. She insisted otherwise. The 'noise level' was at several decibels. And a frequently asked question was "who is that over there next to … ?" Sadly, there are many stories that will never again be told because the tellers are deceased. My wife aptly observed that along with the many photographs, we need to record some of that rich (and otherwise non-repeatable) lore for future generations that might have interest.
(The stories they knew. Grand-parents with their surviving children around 1926. Rachel was not born yet.)
As I have frequently noted in these posts, "Family" is not a universally good experience. When it is basically healthy, it provides much that enriches. A lot of that was evident last Friday. Thanks.
Satchel
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