My People

Yesterday was family reunion part two. I missed part one due to my trip to KC, but there was a part two since two of my cousins, one from Denver and one from Boston, came out with their fresh sprouts. Theyre sisters one has a one year old, the other has a four month old.

It was the year of babies. My other cousin and his wife had a baby as well. Instead of TV or music we just spread a blanket and let the babies entertain us in the backyard. My father and I had a unique vantage point to be able to see more adult faces than baby faces. While everyone else was trying feverishly to get all the babies to look up into their camera lens by making faces, blowing raspberries, and jiggling keys my father and I wanted to take pictures of the 20 or so odd adults and their great attempts at wrangling babies into a photograph. A backstage look at all the other pictures that were being taken, if you will.

It was odd to see all my cousins as parents. I still picture us being the kids not too long ago; living in our bathing suits for the weekend, and fishing with our dads and uncles. My aunts are slowly turning into my grandmother, my uncles slowly metamorphing into grandpa. Were I saw one or two similarities between all the siblings I now see bits and pieces of my long past grandparents in all of them. The same sagging lip, the same soft folds under chins, the same big ears poking through grey hairs. I had the news that my aunt is soon to be a great-grandmother in September. I often wonder how long we will continue these. Our family was always bigbut it keeps getting bigger and further flung. Once our aunts and uncles pass on will we continue as cousins to meet once a year in July? Our two grandparents are literally responsible for hundreds of lives, but eventually we break into our own families. It was just a bit of a sobering thought.

I like going to my family get-togethers. Theyre always up in the Detroit Lakes Area. My uncle has a house/cabin/shack on the lake. We bring food, tents, and folding chairs. Some of them camp out for the weekend. This time my parents and I chose just the day trip option. There are so many lakes, its sparsely populated, and the small towns always make me smile. I truly do like to be able to say I am from Minnesota. I like my state.

I also like my family. Very simple people who dont have much, but always share what little they do have with a great big smile. Most of them have lived in the area all their lives, as their parents did before them, as their kids will do after them. God love em but I am pretty sure I couldnt ever live up there. I lived in rural Minnesota. I did my time. I appreciate my time there because I think it taught me a lot about being patient, working hard, enjoying simple pleasures and entertainments, but I am ready for something else now.

We are a pasty people. We schalack ourselves in sun block: SPF 85.

We are a bland people. Instead of seasoning we prefer to let the robust spice of macaroni flavor our dishes.

We are a people of fun bodies. We float like buoys with our aunts and mothers.

You can hear the same laughs every year.

You will hear the same stories told again and again. Even though I know them all, know where the pauses will be, where the same halt for confirmation of which uncle or aunt it was in the story will come I love them all, and still laugh as if I have heard them for the very first time.

Its odd but around my family I become the shy introspective observer I was as a child around them. I think its because I was one of the babiesI only have one cousin younger than meand we lived so far from everyone it was hard for me to bond with them all. They all babysat each other, went to the same schools, visited each other more than two or three times a year. I am pretty sure I am not myself around them. I am 8 years old again. Shyly standing behind my father while he sits. Politely smiling as my aunts and uncles question me and limiting my remarks to them. And yet I am still comfortable with that role with them. I dont feel the need to be any different. I am still little Joni. Not loud and obnoxious out there Jo. Its relaxing and comfortable to slip back into that persona. I was it far longer than I am me now. And yet it still is me.

It is my family. I know where I came from. I can trace it in every laugh line on every face, in every family story, in every bowl of fruit salad that gets brought ever year to the lake, I see the threadwork of life as a small town Minnesota girl, and its beautiful.