Intergenerational
Today I am grateful for safe travels, time with extended family, and just now the squirrels making their way along our neighborhood telephone lines. They gave me a reason to pause, observe, wonder.
We had a family reunion for my dad’s side of the family this weekend, in my hometown. It had been ten years since the last one, with some funerals in between that brought some of us together. Throw a pandemic into the mix, and here we are in 2022.
A big thank you to all who planned, prepared, traveled, and in ways minor and major made it an enjoyable time together. My dad was one of seven siblings. Sadly, the last sibling, my Aunt Norma Jean, died last June. After another in-law’s death last summer, Aunt Lucille, the only ones who remain in that generation are two more in-laws. My mom and my Uncle Nilus.
That leaves the next generation to carry on. We are thirty-five first cousins, with 34 still plugging along. That’s a pretty good track record and one we hope holds steady for years to come. It is only my sister Mary Jo who has died from our generation. We are all in our fifties, sixties, and seventies now, grandparents and great-grandparents among us.
It was good to see each other, visit, share some memories of our grandparents and parents, eat good food, play some games and share some activities. We looked at old pictures, filled in memory gaps for one another, and also realized that some of the memories died with our parents. There will be some answers we will never know. For years now I have been writing down notes here and there to capture our parents’ and grandparents’ times. I was happy to be able to refer back to those notes on my phone this weekend to share some details I had recorded.
There were some from the next generations, including our son and stepdaughter, and one of our grandsons. He’s 7 and it was fun to see him quickly connect with cousins he has never met and start playing together. He got some satisfaction out of seeing his name—Leo—on every name tag. That was my grandfather’s name.
My sister Ruth and I took Mom, in a wheelchair, on the short trip from her nursing home to the reunion venue so she could get some fresh air and see a few of the family, including some of her nieces and nephews, grandson, granddaughter and a great-granddaughter. Intergenerational and generational. That is what family reunions are about.
I learned new things and was reminded of old things I already knew. It was enjoyable, sentimental, wistful. I miss our younger days and our parents and aunts and uncles. I shake my head at the speed at which decades pass. It is up to our generation now, and the generations coming along after us, to keep connections and to share history as well as build new memories.
I marvel at the blood lines so evident in faces and physiques. I savor the moments shared with my siblings and cousins this weekend, as well as my own family. We are a diverse bunch from diverse locales. We came together in the present to honor our past and offer hope for the future. We are a family full of memories, some difficult and others joyous, and generations full of blessings.
Our parents and grandparents, in a photo from the 1940’s. In front: Cletus, Grandma Rose, Grandpa Leo, Norma Jean. Back: Esther, Art, Rosella, Jenny, Rita.
