Family Functions

My daughter found this pic for me! Isn't it great? I'm trying to think of a caption for it and start using it for my signature line in my e-mails.

Today, we helped my aunt celebrate her 95th birthday. Yes, that's right, 95. And it isn't a decrepit 95, either. She is walking around with the aid of a walker. She recognized me immediately and remembered I had three cubs, even if she hadn't met the last one! Amazing. She moved to Peoria right befor my Uncle Earl died, soon after Man Cub, my youngest, made his earthly debut. She looked awesome. I told my kids how my sister and I used to go to her and Uncle Albert's house, where she waited eagerly for us and promptly took us to Nashville for the essential ingredients for a good country afternoon - chocolate chips and Spumoni ice cream! We'd make cookies. She never reprimanded us for eating cookie dough, unlike some of our other relatives, who felt raw eggs were the work of the devil incarnate. I think she had something like five baking sheets and we just lined them up on her kitchen table and dipped spoons and licked fingers to our hearts' content.

Aunt Mildred married my Uncle Albert, who is my grandfather's older brother. The lived about 1/2 mile away from my grandparents, so it was quite easy to ride the four-wheeler or even walk over there.

Always in memory of that place is this interesting piece of art. It's a canvas background with little sparse jade-colored leaves and flowers made of fine colored gravel. In fact, when Aunt Mildred had her estate sale, I had my mother exclusively look for that piece of work when she was down there, but she had no idea what I was talking about, which utterly blew me away because I always thought that was the most interesting thing in the house! She came home with a few pieces for me and one is quite lovely, so I did not complain and just figured someone beat me to it. Imaging my surprise when Aunt Mildred invited us up from the conference room (party room) to see her room. It looks like a very nice efficiency hotel with beautiful windows and plenty of room for a lady who always lived very simply. However, there, above her dresser, was the artwork.

Amazed, I looked at it and touched it. Remarkably, everything was still glued firmly in place. Apparently, her sister made it for her (I forgot that, although I asked her about it several times over the years), and she kept it. Most people put their home-made gifts from family in a "safe" place. Yeah, right. LOL.

As I looked at it, I realized how enthralled I was and WHY. There is not a stitch of embroidery or a touch of paint. The patterns consist of a tree made from small black rocks in the form of a weeping willow, with tube beads set just right to make the willow branches. There is some sort of Shinto-esque building made of goldtone blocks for the bricks and very translucent rock in garnet and slate to make it look like darkly tinted windows. In a border fashion, more fine rocks are made to wind around the right upper corner of the work, green rocks in a row sprouting peach-colored flowers with an occasional leaf-shaped tile. My fingers traced it just like I did at 10, and the rocks still felt firmly attached. Not a piece was missing. Amazing how long ago that was, and how carefully she has guarded that painting over the years. Her daughter Norma says there is a smaller piece that accompanies that and I remember that, too.

Anyway, it was just a pleasant, pleasant day. Three hours up, three hours there, and three hours home. The cubs behaved themselves and delighted the geriatric crowd. Apparently, Man Cub kept a little lady with a pretty little dog named "Beau" entertained for a good 15 minutes, him happy to play with the dog and her happy to just talk to him about her dog. My cousin, Gale, who is a general surgeon in Decatur, arranged it with his wife, Mary Lou. A few of Mom and Alice's cousins came up, along with Doug and Susan, my first cousins. My cousin Wade's son Tyler came, too, and he's going into law enforcement! I think that's terrific, but apparently his mother isn't too thrilled with it. According to Tyler, Sarah asks him every morning if he's changed his mind.

Mom's cousin Lois brought a marriage certificate from Georg B. Z. to the party, and everyone pulled out their genealogy bits, and it turned into a genealogy conference really quick! Too funny. Everyone whipped out cameras and took pictures of each other's stuff. Like they couldn't make a list, go home, scan it and send it. Silly humans. They're my family, though, and they are incredible people. This genealogy kick is giving Mom a sense of direction. She's reaching out and meeting cousins 15 times removed and stuff. Okay, maybe not that far, but she recently met a young Z. male and actually brought his GGGrandfather's tomb stone to him in her trunk. She had my sister STAND WATCH while she removed the broken pieces from the graveyard. It's not like anyone's going to miss it, and only this young gentleman will truly appreciate what she did. He's so far removed from his ancestral roots that he will probably never pass this way again, and Mom has sent him so much textual and photographical resources, he may never need to.

Aunt Mildred expressed her profound regret at not being able to attend any of the funerals we've endured so much of over the past 9 years. She was so close to so many, but the nature of the elderly beast is that family needs to assist, and her daughter took charge of that task and has seen to her needs beautifully, albeit about three hours away. I had never been there (feeling guilty, here) but my own grandmother is buried about the same distance. She's been gone for six years, and I've never been down to see her, either.

Talking about so much family and so many of whom we spoke are no longer here wasn't so bad. We all shared so many good memories, and the new generation lifts us all up. Aunt Mildred was so pleased that the cubs were there. I don't think she expected 14, 12 and 10-year-olds to take interest in such an affair, but KitKat took to her immediately and held her hand. Of course, last night, KitKat grew another inch and now surpasses me in height according to Aunt Mildred. She probably does. It was too much fun - for the first time, we helped each other apply makeup in the bathroom before going into the party! Wow. What a moment. She's got such beautiful eyes and just the slightest amount of color just makes her blueberry eyes POP. When she puts her glasses on, they get even larger, so she's getting very hard to miss in a crowd.

Maybe I'm just a proud mom, but the kids are so wonderful to want to go to functions like that. I think they sense how important these things are to me and, knowing I don't often get these chances, they give their support. I hope I return the sentiment to the best of my ability as they grow.

Here's to kids, who help their parents grow while they do!