The Reunion

Once upon a time our families lived closer together.  “Cousins” were not just the kids of your parent’s sibling, they were everybody in the clan that was under age eighteen.  “Aunt Mabel” might not really be your mother’s sister, but any relative about your mother’s age. 

Griffith Cousins

Yearly family reunions used to be common in families.  And it was not just about uniting the nuclear family -- grown kids who had moved a thousand miles away to start their own nuclear family.  The Reunion was a large event involving all living relatives going back about 3 generations.  This kind of Reunion was a delight for Grandma, a memory jogger for Great-grandma, a lot of work for Mom, and a dread for the kids!

Mother and her Family

Two branches of my Ohio family celebrated yearly Reunions: The Careys (Grandmother’s mother’s line) and The Griffiths (Grandmother’s father’s side), so I was doubly “blessed.”

As a child I looked forward to these things about like going to the doctor –It had to be done because my mother was making me, and “it was good for me.”

“Can’t I just stay home and read my book?”

          “We are ALL going.  There is no one here to look after you.”

“But I don’t know anybody there.”

You know Aunt Martha and Uncle Leslie and Grandma and Grandpa.

“I mean kids.  I don’t know the kids!  Who will I play with?”

There’s your cousin Zeke, and his sister Mamie.  They’re about your age.  How will you ever get to know them if you don’t go?!

“Maaaaaahhmm.  It’s so bo-ring!” (That’s mom with the vowel dragged out to emphasize my displeasure.)

“Someday you will understand.  Reunions are important.”

End of story.  I went.

Let me describe to you what it was like to join our relatives for the Reunion. 

The Old Home Place - My Great-Grandparents

For one thing, it was like going back in time.  We lived in a world of  “getting somewhere,” whether it was in our education, our jobs, our cars and houses and clothes.  Granted, our small family (my grandparents, mother, sister and I), didn’t seem to be succeeding compared to the world at large, but the aspiration was definitely there.   

My relatives, on the other hand, did the same kinds of agrarian and small-town jobs they had always done and lived on the family properties they had always lived on, and drove old farm trucks that focused on how much work they could do – not what they looked like!

Secondly, they were country folk but we were city.  It was boring at their houses on the farm because no one watched TV, and when we got there, the “entertainment” was for the cousins to take us out to look at the barn.  What was there?  Hay.  Horses in the field that we didn’t know how to ride.  Cows that we were afraid of.  My sister and I stared at things and walked around and carefully watched where we put out feet—no kind of fun that we could relate to. 

But it was great for the cousins’ entertainment.  Everyone knows that country cousins get a fiendish delight in humiliating the city cousins!

The lowest point was meeting the older relatives.  We have all had the childhood experience of being greeted enthusiastically – smiles, hugs, kisses and gushing questions – by an older person whom we never remember meeting.  THEY definitely seem to know us, but it seems to make no difference to anyone that WE don’t know them!  Uncomfortable!

The high point was the FOOD.  Our mom was a good cook, but all of these women had grown up and raised their children on a farm, and in a day when there were no frozen dinners, or even convenient packaged mixes.  Everything was made from “scratch” and every ingredient was fresh – most often coming from their own gardens out back.  I was a very tiny girl and couldn’t eat or even taste everything I wanted.  If only I could take home with me the asparagus, the fried chicken, and the strawberry-rhubarb pie!

This was the one part of country life that I envied.  I felt small in their presence, and wished that I could ever attain to such knowledge and confidence on the land and in the kitchen.

Now that I look back on those times, the real high point is the MEMORIES.  Walking around in open fields where there were no sidewalks, seeing (and smelling!) things that were foreign to me except from books, watching a dozen busy women spread food on long covered tables from living room to kitchen door, even being smothered and beloved by people I didn’t know. 

The name of this experience:  Belonging.

That’s what a Reunion is about, no matter how it is planned or packaged or experienced – it is about belonging to people other than yourself.  It is the truth that we don’t make ourselves, but we live it most at a Reunion.

Now I understand, Mom.  Reunions are important.