Rambling Thoughts on Family

There's a great song by the Decembrists that tells a long winding tale of ancestry. A mother who was a Chinese Trapeze artist. Being lost in a game of high stakes Canasta to a Brigadeer on a ship... a sister who moved to America to start a punk rock band.
While I didn't grow up with my relatives all living around me, I have always belonged to a family who really valued being part of a family. And I mean the whole extended deal - not what is called the "nuclear" family (how creepy does that sound?!).

Even though I have always lived in communities where the norm is to live in the same hollow, if not in the back yard, of one's grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, et. al., I sometimes find that I am closer friends with my aunts, uncles, cousins, great aunts, third cousins twice removed than many of the people who live in the same community with those folk. Perhaps distance does make the heart grow fonder? All I know is that ever since I can remember, it has been a priority to attend family gatherings - from the usual - the annual Thanksgiving and family reunions- to the weddings and funerals. Even if it's for a sad reason that we get together, I find I always enjoy every second I spend with my family. We spend our time telling stories. Most of my life, I have listened, but as the older generation passes on, my cousins and I've begun to share in the storytelling about ancestors passed with my parents, aunts and uncles.

There are so many characters in my family that I have known about my entire life. Some, I was lucky enough to know as a toddler. But others, I feel that I know so well, I continue to learn more about with each family gathering.

This weekend I attended my cousin's wedding. I shared a table with my cousins, aunts and uncles and parents. I wore an antique hat inherited from granny that had belonged to her aunt - the legendary Aunt Ruth! I ended up with a lot of Aunt Ruth's stuff. She was my great grandmother, Nanie's sister. As one of the only cousins to actually have known Nanie and Aunt Ruth, it was natural for much of their belongings to be passed on from Granny to me. Everyone really appreciated the hat. To them, it was like having that generation at the wedding with us. Then we got to talking about Nanie & Aunt Ruth's dad - Poppa. I have a few pieces of furniture, sewing cabinets and wood carvings that he made. He's one of the relatives that I grew up hearing about since I was a small child. I know well the story about what an outgoing man he was - always the first to greet a new neighbor with a homemade pie or a basket of biscuits. He made the best biscuits, and he lived to be a very old age. He befriended a crow, and each morning after breakfast, he would go out on his back step, call out "Crow! Here crow!" That same crow, every morning would fly down, perch on Poppa's arm, and Poppa would feed him (or her) leftover biscuits from his breakfast. Poppa lived alone for a very long time and never had to have anyone take care of him. He prayed everyday that God would not let him become a burden to his family and that he be taken in his sleep when it was his time to die. One night, a tornado swept through Lyon, Mississippi during the night. The next morning, they found Poppa's body high in the branches of a tree. He had died in his sleep. That was sometime around 1970, I believe.

My whole family from my parents back are, for the most part, from Mississippi and Louisiana. I had always thought of my Mom's family as being more of the Louisiana/Southern Mississippi side of the family. This weekend I learned that Poppa was originally from southwest Mississippi, had lived for a long time in New Orleans where he had been a streetcar driver and played music! He played the fiddle and made several fiddles. Later, once he had a family, he quit drinking and playing fiddle. My uncle remembers Poppa showing him how to play the bones and the spoons. He never quit smoking, though. My aunt would roll his cigarettes for him. I still have a pack of Prince Albert papers that once belonged to him.

I could spend days on end hearing those stories. Who needs television with the living memories to be found all around you?