I attended a family reunion this weekend. And survived. Just barely...
It was way cool. The occasion was the 20th anniversary of my cousin April and her husband Duane. They've been married for 20 years. Or did I mention that already? Actually, it's worth mentioning twice. 20 years of marriage in any family is a remarkable accomplishment. In my family, it probably deserves a Nobel Peace Prize...
It was a surprise party. The happy couple weren't supposed to know about it, which of course means there was no way on God's green earth they were going to be surprised. But a funny thing happened on the way to the Forum...they were not only surprised, they were shocked and amazed - and they weren't the only ones.
See, I haven't seen most of my family in almost 20 years. Not on purpose. I love my family. Every one of them. Always have and always will. I come from good people. Crazy maybe - actually, certifiable is more like it - but good.
Nope, the problem wasn't that I didn't want to see them.
What happened was my grandpa died, and after he died, it just didn't feel the same. It wasn't the same. It never could be, and I guess, looking back, I just didn't know how to handle it.
You see, my grandfather was the center of my family's universe. His kitchen table was where every important (and unimportant) conversation ever took place - at volume. That's because no one in my family ever said anything in a normal tone of voice that could be shouted instead. Why take a chance that someone couldn't hear you when yelling at 187 decibels made sure the message got through - as well as punctured the listener's eardrums, pummeled any disagreement into submission, and measured at least 4.5 on the Richter Scale. The good news was that no one was listening anyway - they were too busy yelling back.
One of the overriding memories I had of the last 10-15 years of my grandfather's life was sitting at the kitchen table with Grandpa in one chair and my step-grandmother sitting in the other chair. He'd start regaling me with a story about the shipyards he'd worked in for more than four decades, while at the same time, my step-grandmother would begin telling me about the wart she'd been trying to remove from her ring finger for the past 9 days... Grandpa's stories were great, my step-grandma's...not so much. I'd do the best I could to pay attention to both of them, but the result was always the same. About three minutes into the conversation, one of them (either one, it didn't matter which) would realize they didn't have my undivided attention...so he or she would follow the time-honored tradition of respectful conversational exchange in my family's household - increase the volume!! They'd just talk louder. This of course would prompt the other one to realize you weren't paying complete attention, so they'd raise their voice. Then the other would raise theirs. This little ping-pong match would last for several minutes until the noise level sounded like pre-game warmups at a Chicago Bulls playoff game, with twenty thousand people in attendance and the announcer roaring to the crowd, "LET'S GET READY TO RRRUMMBLLE!!!"
Then, just when you thought it couldn't get worse since they were both at maximum volume, and where can you go from there, right? -- they'd turn their attention away from me and start yelling at each other.
"SHUT UP!! CAN'T YOU SEE I'M TALKING!?"
"YOU SHUT UP - HE DOESN'T GIVE A RAT'S BACKSIDE ABOUT YOUR DAMN WART!!"
"YOU'VE TOLD HIM THAT STORY FORTY SEVEN TIMES ALREADY!"
And so on.
This is actually the simplified version of life with my grandparents - version 1.0. This is what happened before you added relatives. And neighbors. And friends from out of town who happened to drop by for a cup of coffee on their way through. And various onlookers who came just to watch in wonder at one of the truly amazing sights of the twentieth century. Because it had to be seen to be believed. See, it never stopped. First, you add my Aunt Shelley. And of course, friend and lifelong honorary family member Laura (no matter what part of the state she lived in, somehow she showed up at my grandparent's house every weekend). Then my dad would enter and hold court for a couple of hours. My Aunt Robbin was always good for an appearance (at least on alternating years when she was in good graces with the rest of the family).
Then there were the kids - my cousins April, Jill, Quincy, Haley, my sister Sandy, plus step-brothers/sisters, cousins, second cousins, assorted dogs and cats, husbands, ex-husbands (if I named them all, my computer would crash), soon-to-be-husbands, 'guys-we-don't talk-about-because-we-have-no-idea-what-their-relation-is-and-we-don't-want-to-know', strangers who came in off the street looking for a place to stay (and usually wound up in the spare room - sometimes for months at a time), my stepmom Jackie (who was wise enough to stay on the sidelines - you know what they say, 'tis better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt), plus all the kids and friends of their kids, and people who hated kids but couldn't resist free coffee and shouted conversation, plus friends and girlfriends of mine I couldn't resist bringing with me, because it was just too much fun to see the look on their faces when anywhere from eighteen to forty eight people crammed into my grandfather's ten-by-fifteen' kitchen and began hollering at each other at the top of their lungs.
You'd think that was enough, wouldn't you? And you'd be right - just my granddad's side of the family was more than enough fodder to reverberate your eardrums for the following decade.
But is that the end of the story?
Of course not.
Because then there was my step-grandmother's side of the family - and this is where we go from wild to Bizarro-World on steroids -- because every nephew, niece, uncle, aunt, brother, sister, and inbred second cousin in White Trash USA was somehow related to the In-Laws That Would Not End...Butch, Cookie, Vernie, Jackie, Freddy, Sally, Bob (before someone bumped him off or he died of natural causes - I was never quite sure and I'm confident the coroner never figured it out either), Hekyll, Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, plus assorted girlfriends and wives (usually but not always separated), husbands, live-ins and soon-to-be-kicked-outs, etc., plus various other losers, drunks, ex-cons, and serial ax-murderers, always related in some way to my step-relatives - to say nothing of my step-grandmother's litany of brothers and sisters with Old World names bastardized into their English equivalents(Anska/Andy, Colla/Charlie, Ina/Iney, Siska?/Syl, etc.), but whatever you called them didn't matter as long as there were massive amounts of hundred-mile-an-hour vodka available to keep them sedated). They'd show up en masse and head straight for the coffee pot - my grandfather had an industrial-sized coffee pot and it was always brewing, never full. Never full...
They came every weekend, every single one of them, and they came rain or shine. Neither invited nor excluded. It was as if there was a homing beacon over Gramps' kitchen and every friend, relative, and lunatic (these terms are not mutually exclusive) in a hundred square mile radius was magnetically drawn to that little room in a town of 800 people (or two thousand if you believed the summer census).
And all of them came for one reason and one reason only.
Because it was the only place in the known universe where you could go and shout as loud as you wanted and not only was it okay, it was actually encouraged - because everyone else there was too busy shouting themselves to realize the entire place had gone stark raving bonkers.
And my grandfather was in the middle of it, shouting along with the rest of them. Never waited his turn because there wasn't one (besides, it was his house). Never actually cared whether anyone listened because it didn't really matter. Because when you got right down to it, people didn't come to my Grandpa's kitchen to be heard (which was a good thing). People came to Grandpa's to belong. To feel comfortable. Loved. Accepted. No matter how weird you were. No matter how long it had been since you were sober. Or sane. No matter how many warrants were out for your arrest. Whenever anyone came to my grandfather's house they were given a cup of coffee and treated with respect (or told to shut up - same difference) and given the same amount of attention as everyone else - which is to say next to none unless you could somehow scramble to the top of the verbal dogpile and manage to stay there for a few seconds (this was anybody's game unless my dad was in the room, at which point everyone else simply gave him the floor and let him run with it - best show in town) - and none of it mattered.
Because there's no place like home.
And when Grandpa died, I felt like I had no home left to go to.
So I quit going.
And I think for a while, a lot of the rest of my family did too. We were lost. He'd been our anchor and we were adrift - or maybe it was just me - I never really asked - but it felt like I'd lost my entire family, so that when he died, I didn't know where to go anymore.
I was asked to give the eulogy at my grandfather's funeral. To this day it remains the most difficult thing I've ever done, but I got through it. And even in my state of numbness and grief, I marveled at how every relative and near relative, friend and acquaintance, including an awful lot of people who didn't care much about anyone else and weren't welcome in very many places in the world - how every single one of them came that raining, cold, gray, dismal Seattle day to pay their respects to the man who treated them all like people, who touched them all like family.
And when I got done that day, I took a very long vacation from the rest of my family, not because I didn't care, but because I wasn't ready to come back.
Until this weekend.
When I found out about April and Duane's anniversary celebration, I knew I had to go. Because if anyone personifies Grandpa's spirit, his commitment to his family, his unconditional acceptance of those around him, and his hardheaded refusal to give anything but his best every day of his life, it's my cousin April. And aside from my grandpa (and possibly my father), she's the member of my family I admire most, perhaps for the reason I just mentioned - because she reminds me so much of him (right down to the way she puts so much pepper on her food that you can't even tell it's food anymore - my sister and nephew and even my aunt all do it too and it drives me batcookies - quit burying your plate under an inch of pepper and just eat your f---ing potatoes@!).
So I knew it was time to go back, to let my family know I love them, I haven't forgotten about them, and they mean the world to me.
And I was totally unprepared for what I found.
See, when you don't see someone for 15-20 years, something strange happens.
They grow up.
The last time I saw my cousins was at my grandfather's funeral, and they were basically still kids - late teens, early twenties. April and Duane got married fresh out of high school and Grandpa died not long after that. April, Quincy, Jill, my sister Sandy, were all more or less the same age, and several years younger than me. So when they were kids, they formed an all-girl posse and got into various kinds of girl-trouble while I, being the only male, got to hang out with Dad and Grandpa (the ultimate in cool), going fishing, listening to them tell stories, and learning how to tell the kind of lies people didn't care were true or not. I cared about my cousins but I wasn't exactly close to them. They were close to each other.
So when I saw them this weekend, I was unprepared for what I would encounter. Women, grown women, exceptional, with strong families and good lives, and I felt so happy for them, and proud they were my relatives, and profoundly relieved that life hadn't ended when Grandpa died, that life goes on, that life is good.
Because they were all my family. It wasn't awkward. It felt good. Just like it did before, but different too. Grandpa's spirit was there, in a good way. And everyone was their own person. Quincy's extraordinary intelligence and vulnerability, Jill's eyes that shone with laughter and life, April's character and humor - as well as their families, their husbands (Duane, Cooper, Cletus - all the best kind of men), and especially their kids - Felicia, Danielle, Shannon, Zane, Tiana (Jill's kids weren't there but I'd lay odds they're good kids too). It was also present in the 'older generation' (who will be putting a contract out on me for that description, but let's face it, if I'm not getting any younger, neither are they) - in Laura whose age I can't print even though I'm 2 states away because she'd hunt me down and kill me in a thousand grisly ways, but who still looks great and has more sex appeal than any twenty-something I know; in my aunt Shelley who has had more to do with keeping our family together throughout the years than all the rest of us combined and has never received the recognition she deserves for it; in my Dad who still generates respect and admiration like no other man I know, partly because he actually lived and worked in the working world - which is something people my age and younger can only wish they could experience - and partly because he's able to convey that world in a way that forces you to admire and respect the men and women who grew up in it (and finally because he's a storyteller who's good enough never to reveal where truth leaves off and fantasy takes over); and Jackie, who still takes care of a million things from the sidelines (and lets my Dad act like he's in charge - which makes her both one of the wisest women I've ever known, and makes him one of the luckiest men), along with all the other relatives and friends, all getting together to celebrate Duane and April's relationship by drinking beer, singing karaoke, and shooting squirt guns. The difference was, this time no one was yelling. People were actually engaged in conversation (in between bottles of beer and squirt gun fights). It was different but in some ways even better, I think because each generation builds on the one that goes before it. None of it would have happened without my Grandfather (and my real Grandmother who died when I was four years old, yet remains the dominant woman in my life as well as the lives of my dad and aunts), and yet with each generation, all of us learn to love a little bit better - not more, just better.
My nephew Max was there and he was an example of what I saw as well - a young man who needs to be connected to his family, who has so much to offer and just needs to realize he belongs. My sister raised him right and now I see it wasn't an accident. Because her parents (my parents) and all my cousin's parents and grandparents gave us the one thing that ensured we were going to turn out okay. They gave us love. No one will ever confuse my family (either side - my dad's or my mom's) with the Cleavers or the Bradys (thank God), or any other sitcom family we grew up thinking we were supposed to be. Fortunately, we're also not going to be the Mansons (Charles or Marilyn), or the Osbournes (although there were times when I was worried).
But they will know we are family.
Because we love each other. (Actually, they might mistake us for the Simpsons...Dohhh!)
