Sunday, May 23, 2004

Family Disunions (A column in and about Century)

I sat in a campground pavilion beside a second cousin who has cancer and watched my children play by themselves in the park.
I thought about endings.
The occasion was the annual Lowery Family Reunion at Lake Stone. One of my grandmothers was born a Lowery, and we attend with her to hug those cousins we see only once a year, tell them how nice they look, how their kids have grown — to gain perspective on our lives by catching up with theirs.
Before we eat, we gather at the end of the pavilion for a group photo — usually taken only after many requests to squeeze closer together because there are just too many people to fit in the frame. Someone asks a blessing, then we make two lines and eat our fill of home cooking — collard greens, barbecued or fried chicken, peas and butter beans, cornbread, sweet tea.
For dessert, there’s Grandma’s famous chocolate pie, or pea-pickin’ cake, or pecan pie or something else as sweet and Southern.
In my youth, there would have been more children in the park than swings for them to share. They would elbow for the sliding board ladder and separate into touch football teams along the lakeside.
Back then, there were more kin I did not recognize, and the noise of voices in the pavilion drove folks out under the pines for quiet conversations. A lack of seating forced kids to eat outside at picnic tables in empty camping spaces.
But we had plenty of room this time, and more swings were empty than were in use. It took no effort to fit everyone in the photo. There were few folks I didn’t recognize, and many more who I know weren’t there — first and second cousins, aunts and uncles — family members who live nearby (closer than I do) and don’t feel the need to connect with distant family, or who have emotional wounds that will never heal.
I suppose family trees can die from trauma, split by feuds like lightning strikes. But they’re more likely to rot from the inside — outwardly healthy, betraying no sign of disease except fewer green sprouts this spring or heavier leaf fall this autumn.
I thought about this while I sat beside a cousin who used to share his Iron Man comics — and who probably wouldn’t be at the next reunion — and watched my children running on a carpet of dry, brown pine straw in a playground that was more empty than full, and I knew how the playground felt.
**
(The preceding originally appeared as one of my weekly columns, "Undercurrents," written for The News Herald in Panama City, FL. See the online archive at the link.)

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