My Favorite Word of the Day

hence

I just saw this word in a message and I realized

how underutilized in our daily speech

this magnificent word is.

HENCE, I will use it more often and start a word revolution!

We are the Stories We Tell

(published in Pittman Creek Community Newsletter)

.

“It is not so much that things happen in a family

as it is that the family is the things that happen in it.

The family is continually becoming what becomes of it.

It is every christening and every commencement,

every falling in love, every fight,

every departure and return . . .”

(Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark)

The last time my family got together was for my grandfather’s funeral; before that, it was grandmother’s funeral. Beyond that it was for my grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary. Family reunions faded away around the time I hit my latter teen years. As the years stretch longer between gatherings, I have mourned the loss of connection, recollection, and memory making. As we gathered before and after my grandparents’ funerals, there were many moments of poignant remembrances and tear-inducing hilarity. For me, anytime the family gathered at “the homeplace”, I got a taste of heaven, a glimpse of how things should be.

It used to be that family reunions were an annual event of each and every summer for the extended Anderson Family. Our 600-acre farm would overflow with people ranging in age from one week to 90 years young. A volleyball net would be set up, the front lawn hosted a softball game, the horses were saddled and ridden, Grandpa’s homemade “jitneys” were gassed up and zooming around the farm. Lawn chairs and picnic tables were set up all over the orchard. Tables fairly bowed under the weight of my Grandma’s excellent potato salad, plates of grilled chicken and hamburgers, every kind of jello/whip cream salad you can imagine, pies in a variety of summer fruits.

Best of all was the crowd of people! Between my parents, they have nine siblings who have supplied me with scads of cousins. There were also great-grandparents, great-uncles and –aunts, cousins removed any number of times, and a plethora of honorary relatives, too. As the talk and activity swirled around me, I felt loved and protected and significant. I belonged to something bigger than myself!

Grandpa Evan died eight years ago. It has been eight years since I’ve seen the more immediate relatives. The others I haven’t seen since I was a teenager. Typing this last sentence grieves me very much.

I have a two-year-old son, Thaddeus. I am sad that he won’t hear Uncle Joe tell about the time he experimented with a bullet, a vise, and a hammer (and grandpa’s fierce anger [which sprang from being totally scared out of his mind!]). I hate that he won’t grow up in a gaggle of cousins, running all over the farm, eating hot juicy strawberries from the patch, and being affectionately teased by his older relatives. He is poorer because he will not hear the handed-down story of how the family worked and played on that farm for over 100 years.

More than anything, I hate that we have become a family mostly in name only. We have lost our stories because we have abandoned the event during which storytelling flourishes: the Family Reunion. The family reunion is more than an event, it is a place. It is a location in which we can come home to where we are known and still learn more about others and ultimately ourselves. It is the place from which we can stand against the alienations that our world and culture thrust upon us: online living . . . not being thin—pretty—rich—smart enough . . . living lives so busy and so far from home that even annual visits are difficult to fit into our lives.

But earlier this month I made an April Fool’s Resolution: I am going to plan a family reunion for next year. Every month I am going to send out letters, make phone calls, beg, plead, cajole, and flirt my way into producing a family reunion. I need to hear Uncle Joe’s story of the bullet shattering the light bulb and grandpa’s yell shattering his ear drum! I need to hear how Uncle Jeff flipped the motorcycle while showing off for a girlfriend in front of Grandpa and Grandma. I need to remember I come from a specific location and a specific family.

God’s kindest (and most confounding) gift is the gift of each other in family--

“Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family:

Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.”

(Jane Howard)

She Looks: Apostrophe to Sarah Pierpont by Jonathan Edwards [c. 1723]

They say there is a young lady in [New Haven] who is beloved of that almighty Being, who made and rules the world, and that there are certain seasons in which this great Being, in some way or other invisible, comes to her and fills her mind with exceeding sweet delight, and that she hardly cares for anything, except to meditate on him--that she expects after a while to be received up where he is, to be raised up out of the world and caught up into heaven; being assured that he loves her too well to let her remain at a distance from him always. There she is to dwell with him, and to be ravished with his love and delight forever. Therefore, if you present all the world before her, with the richest of its treasures, she disregards it and cares not for it, and is unmindful of any pain or affliction. She has a strange sweetness in her mind, and singular purity in her affections; is most just and conscientious in all her actions; and you could not persuade her to do anything wrong or sinful, if you would give her all the world, lest she should offend this great Being. She is of a wonderful sweetness, calmness and universal benevolence of mind; especially after those seasons in which this great God has manifested himself to her mind. She will sometimes go about from place to place, singing sweetly; and seems to be always full of joy and pleasure; and no one knows for what. She loves to be alone, and to wander in the fields and on the mountains, and seems to have someone invisible always conversing with her.

Hail to Texas!

I have missed Midwestern storms! Missed the big thunder, the pouring rain, the excitement of tornados (when they are close enough to threaten but far enough away that they don't live up to the potential), the dramatic weather bulletins . . . It's glorious!

Growing up on the farm, inclement weather meant everyone gathered at Grandpa Evan's and Grandma Johnnie's and fun was had! If we were snowed in, there was a big pot of chili (before we lost the electricity), sleeping in sleeping bags in the living room, missing school, playing games, etc. The town grandparents--Grandpa Keith and Grandma Wanda--would bring groceries to the end of the road where it met the highway and we would snowmobile the half-mile to get them. Fun!

If there was a tornado warning or bad winds, then we'd run up to the "big house" (not a jail, just what we called my grandparents' home!) and try to guess when to quick run to the basement! The power would often go out and the air was electric with excitement (and electricity from the lightning, too!)! Danger approached!

My aunt Julie had duly filled me up with horror stories for every situation. For the tornado, it was that a piece of straw had been wind-driven through a man's heart. To this day, when there are high winds I try to make sure that there isn't any loose straw around!

Oh, all the impending disaster!

Anyway, one day last week I was aware, sort of, that it was kind of dark outside, but it wasn't until I received an e-mail from my mom (in Iowa) that said she hoped that I (in Texas) was watching the weather and that I had a plan.

A plan? I suddenly realized that I didn't even have a basement, let alone a plan! For some reason, even though they live in a state with a healthy tornado season, Texans don't build every house with a basement. Like, ours doesn't have a basement. We do have a garden tub which is quite deep; however, it shares a wall with a huge picture window.

We have beautiful vaulted ceilings. We have a house FULL of gorgeous floor-to-ceiling windows. We have new carpet.

Yes, we have no basement. (Sung to the tune of Yes, We Have No Bananas!)

Thankfully, it only hailed. We do have a garage.




No plan yet, though.

So. Incredibly. Sad.

Johnny and June Carter Cash's home burned down yesterday . . .

They entertained presidents and Billy & Ruth Graham . . .

Hurt was partially filmed there.

They wrote music and lived their whole married lives in that house.

It is sad.