The Family Reunion

Last weekend, eighty-six in our family gathered at a resort in northern Minnesota to, uh, well, you know....If you were under twelve, you were bored, heavily involved in fun, and getting to know relatives you had only heard about.

If you were middle-aged, you watched your children meet other members of the family, swam, golfed, boated, canoed, played tennis, and managed to find your way to the fermented and distilled areas so thoughtfully provided by resort management for refreshments.

If you were in the geezer generation, you talked and talked and talked and talked...mainly about now, but family stories were bubbling up all over the place. You noted family resemblances, admired new spouses, clucked over the occasional divorced, but mainly took pleasure in seeing the family find ways of making new friendships and renewing old ones.

Long ago, many of us lived in Minnesota, but now we have dispersed all over the place, and getting together is not easy. It's not just the challenge of getting from place A to place B; it's the realization that to maintain a family takes considerable effort, as much an act of will as an act of love.

And it is at such events that one becomes palpably aware of those who preceded us, not only in previous generations who made us possible but also those who have departed more recently - the pain of these departures has not yet been eased by time. 

So the stories and the pictures we brought to share take on another dimension, because if we do not do these things, who will there be to tell them at some future reunion?