Monday Moments: We Know Where We Came From

Friday afternoon, my cousin texted to say they were sitting on the patio at my aunt and uncle’s old house, so I walked over. “THE PATIO” has been a gathering place for our family for as long as I can remember. My aunt and uncle are both gone now, but one of their sons owns the house, and the patio still does what it has always done. People pull up a chair, someone else wanders over, stories start, and laughter follows.

Family was arriving from out of town for our annual picnic, so we sat out there catching up and reminiscing about family gatherings from years past and the traditions that came with them. We remembered my uncle shooting off fireworks on the Fourth of July in the schoolyard just beyond the fence, celebrating birthdays together as young kids, Christmas gift exchanges among all the cousins, and New Year’s Eve at my aunt and uncle’s house. While the grown-ups played cards upstairs, we kids were hooligans in the basement, taking turns spying on them and reporting back to the rest of the gang whatever funny things we overheard.

As we got older, we played volleyball at the picnic and then it was our kids’ turn. We’d put out a Slip ’N Slide and the hose, and they’d spend the afternoon running around and playing together while the adults visited.

We remembered the food too, especially the signature dishes you could count on seeing year after year, like my Grandma Shirley’s roast cooked with onions and mushrooms—the kind of dish you looked forward to before you even arrived. I started bringing fruit pizza to the family picnic sometime in the ’90s, and more than thirty years later, I’m still bringing it every year.

Eventually, everyone left until it was just three of us cousins on the patio, and the conversation turned to the people we’ve lost—my aunt and uncle, my dad, my grandma and grandpa, Grandma Winnie, the matriarch of our clan, Aunt Vicki, cousin Debbie, and my cousin Julie’s husband, Ron. We talked about how much we miss them, what they gave to our family, the traditions they helped create, and how losing the people who have always been there changes the shape of a family. We talked about life, loss, God, and some of the things you only get into when you’ve known each other for most of your lives. We laughed a lot, shed a few tears, and when we finally got up from that patio, we joked that we’d just had a therapy session that ended with hugs.

More family arrived Saturday, which meant more time on the patio, more catching up, more stories and some pizza thrown in for good measure. Sunday brought rain, so our family picnic moved out to the Izaak Walton venue.

There it all was: way too much food, the same signature dishes we look forward to every year, people hopping from table to table trying to visit with everyone, and hugs when someone walked in and again before they left. Our oldest generation is now in their nineties, and the youngest there Sunday was a teenager. There were decades of our family sitting in that room together.

Of course, there were people missing. You notice that more as the years go by. The people who used to be fixtures at these gatherings slowly become the people we tell stories about at them. I sometimes wonder what will happen when the last of our family’s older generation is gone. Will we still have the picnic? Will everyone still come home? Will someone still make sure there’s a place for all of us to gather?

This weekend maybe gave me my answer: we already are.

My aunt and uncle aren’t sitting on that patio anymore, but we are. My grandma and grandpa, my dad, Aunt Vicki, Grandma Winnie and Ron weren’t at that picnic Sunday, but their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren were. We were telling their stories, eating the foods we’ve eaten together for years, laughing about things that happened decades ago and making new memories that will probably become stories of their own.

The traditions didn’t disappear when we lost the people who started them. They became ours to carry. Not because anyone asked us to, but because this family and its history still matter to us. Every time we gather, another piece of that history gets passed along.

We all know where we came from, and there’s pride in that. It’s our history. Not because our family is perfect, but because it’s ours. These are our people