Let’s get this straight from the start: my grandma Ruth did not sit around knitting and watching soap operas. She was known to take a nip or two from the “cold medicine” in the back of the cabinet. She was always singing “Maybellene” (Chuck Berry – 1955) while dancing with her hands in the air. She would sit my brother and I down on the couch with all the blinds closed during electrical storms–warning us that if we used a pencil or pen, we would be struck by lightning. She said the movement of the writing instrument on paper was a magnet for a bolt of it. She sometimes wore her wigs a little sideways, canned collards and ate them straight from the Ball jar, and made the best biscuits and stew beef EVER. I have a bushel of colorful relatives and I love them all. I bet you have a couple in your family, too.
My second cousin on my mama’s side always referred to satan as “old cloven hoof.” And I agreed. She could use that phrase in her own special way, causing laughter between us for right near 5 minutes. We all have relatives that have chosen to follow “the road not taken.” They live their lives, mostly happy, and sometimes oblivious to the rest of the world. They do no harm, love all their people, give the best hugs and cook with no comparison.
I’ve learned to embrace my oddities at this point in my life. I received them from a perfect storm of DNA. As I grow older, I notice little things I say and mannerisms I behold remind me of cousins, aunts and uncles—not just my parents: the way I swing my foot when I cross my legs in church, the manner in which I perform the “side eye” when others are totally speaking out of both sides of their mouths, and how I rest my hand on my hip when I’m giving a “come to Jesus” speech.
I sometimes surprise myself when I laugh and it sounds like a favorite cousin. She has recently passed and I miss her dearly. She loved cats as I do, forever taking in and nursing stranded kittens. She made biscuits exactly like and every bit as delicious as grandma Ruth. And every bush, tree and flower she planted in her yard flourished. We sadly do not have that gift in common.
We’ve never had much in the way of family reunions on the maternal side of my family. I wish we had. So many are gone now and many I have lost touch with over the years. Life passes as fast as a dragonfly snapping up a mosquito. Gone in a second, it sometimes seems. We are all a little guilty of making statements such as “we’ll get together soon” or “let’s plan to meet up next month” . . . never to go down that road again.
Lately I have attended several funerals and was happy to see friends and relatives I had not visited in an embarrassing long time. However, funerals are such sorrowful occasions for a reunion of sorts. Maybe we should all get on the horn and gather up our people if we have not done so in ‘too long to remember.’ What are we waiting for? What?
