“Everyone wants to meet the Boy,” Nana explained a few weeks ago, and so we take a trip to Rock Hill to see the aunts, uncles, and cousins.

A trip to Rock Hill means a trip to one of the best hosts we know — my aunt. She’ll suggest a get together, say she wants to cook as little as possible, then bring out half a dozen different dishes. We arrive early to help out a bit. I cut some squash; K makes herself busy with melons; and soon, we have too many cooks in the kitchen.

When the rest of the family arrives and adds their food, we we end up with a bar covered with salads alone. “If anyone leaves hungry,” Nana often laughs, “It’s his own fault.”

Yet tasty as it is, the food is not the reason for the visit. Family, family, family — and this is only the smallest portion of the smallest percent of our huge family. Had all the cousins and their children come, we would have easily had forty or fifty people in the house.

Yet enough cousins came to make a party for the kids as well.

I watch the kids — who can even count them all? — playing and screaming, and I think, “This must be what it’s like to be the Brady Bunch.”

Not a bad thought, indeed.

This was written on the 28th but not uploaded due to a lack of internet access. Plus, I have to keep my once-a-day record up for July, hence the cheating back-dating.