Yesterday was my family reunion. While enjoying the wonderful food, including sauer kraut, ambrosia salad and some deserts that were to die for, I was left thinking about the nature of family.
This weird group of people who all sorta kinda look like you. Who all have the same grey eyes and body images. Who all have a joint connection to each other even if we had never met. Who tell stories that you almost had forgotten. Who remember you when your diapers were full. Family.
And only family can understand when you look at your Uncle and see your Dad, and understand when you start to cry.
Who ask about your health not to be nice but to compare notes.
Who will end up telling you what happened to your 1st, 2nd or 3rd marriage with out really asking.
Who will gladly give you recipes (almost).
And who will ask you about things you really never wanted to talk about, but will anyway.
And my family, who came from one state and ended up here and no one really knows why. Who left what sounded like comfort and security to live here with no real support system in place.
Spending time in the past, remembering our family who have passed away. Or remembering (while never ever fully forgetting) my cousin Richard's 11 months of hell on earth on broad the U.S.S. Pueblo. Looking at military pictures of fathers and uncles and wondering if they thought they would make it home?
And now the next generation, this group of relative (so to speak) strangers who carry the Bame gene that requires them to always have a pot of coffee on hand and sit at the kitchen table talking till midnight.
Thanks for being so gracious and showing up, for sharing your stories, for making those promises to be back next year if not sooner and for signing the book....now when I need a kidney I know where to look!
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