We are the Stories We Tell

(published in Pittman Creek Community Newsletter)

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“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)