Pre-Christmas Family Reunion
reunion
Family Reunion
Papa and his three sisters with friends and other family.
Reunion
We took Papa back to the old country for a family reunion this afternoon, driving on backroads so rough that I thought we must have somehow teleported to Poland in the mid-90s. It was just the boys; the girls had volleyball tryouts and exam prep to complete today. So off the three of us went to meet with family we hadn’t seen in years.
Reunion
The last time we went to this particular family reunion was seven years ago. L was younger than the Boy is now, and the Boy wasn’t. Nana was still able to travel, and several relatives who lived in the area still lived in the area.
Teens from that reunion are now married, likely with children. Some of them might have even been there. For me, most of them were unknown faces. Many of them were from Papa’s father’s brothers’ families, and I had seen them only a handful of times in my life.
Still, many of them — the older family — knew me, of course, and came to talk to me.
“How’s your dad doing?” was the common question. They asked Papa as well. His answer was never wavering: “I’m hanging in there.”
Reunited
“Tomorrow, we go to pick up Mama and E from the airport,” the Girl virtually squealed last night as she got ready for bed. It was one of a long line of such excited proclamations: as we made breakfast; before lunch; when we finished watching a movie together; before brushing teeth; while brushing teeth; after brushing teeth. It was, in short, L’s mantra.
Of course that meant a day of waiting. A day of “How long” questions. How long until we leave? How long until we get there? How long until Mama’s plane lands? How long until Mama comes? How long until we get home?
How long until you realize that how long doesn’t help things go any faster?
The last time K returned from Poland, by the time we walked back upstairs at the airport to double check the arrival time at the Lufthansa desk and made our way back to the international arrival hall, K was standing, waiting. Today, we arrived when the plan was scheduled to land only to discover it was to land now a half an hour later. Add to it that K’s baggage was the last to make a circuit around the luggage carousel and that customs picked her for a “open your baggage and take everything out” inspection (I guess travelling with an exhausted toddler is a fairly common scheme among international smugglers), and it was past five, almost two hours after our arrival, when K and the Boy appeared at the far end of the arrival hall. Disregarding all “No Entry!” signs, L and I virtually sprinted to her. Hugs. Tears. An emotional return to the States after an emotional time in Poland.
On arriving, K disappeared and we soon heard the sound of water running. She came out of the bathroom with wet hair and in pajamas, smiling at me exhaustedly and explaining sweetly that the children were all my responsibility.
A quick bath, a quick bit of fruit and cereal for the Boy, and before we know it, everyone is asleep.
If only.
The Boy, not used to falling asleep with me, was soon fussing, then crying, then outright panicking. It was not the right shoulder, not the right voice, not the right pulse, not the right surroundings. It will take some time for us all to get back to the right everything.
Twenty
We jostle about in our adolescence, bumping against others and ourselves, usually questioning where we stand with others, often unsure of where we stand with ourselves. Such tumultuous times of identity formation, questioning, and reformation. We make and remake ourselves year after year, month after month, even day after day, and we’re all nagged by the same question: is the me I see in myself what others see? Or more to the point, is the me I see in myself the real me?
Sociologists and psychologists tell us that adolescence is a relatively recent cultural phenomenon, a product of the same innovations that created the leisure class and free time. In the past, one’s position in life was fairly well determined generations before one was born. Once born to generations of farmers, always a farmer; once born to a family of wealth and position, always an aristocrat. These days we wake up and find ourselves in possession of a driver’s license and a handful of friends, unsure what to do with either, and we struggle to make decisions that weren’t even available ten decades ago.
Every year, as an eighth grade teacher, I see my own students going through this, yet with seemingly infinitely more choices that I had. Their thumbs can move at over a phone’s small keypad at the speed of gossip, and last week is ancient history. They come to class sometimes with tears in their eyes, and I think, “Someone broke someone’s heart, and they’re both sure they’ll never survive it,” and I smile to know they will, because I did, and a hundred and twenty kids in my cohort did as well. “Love is blindness” I mutter under my breath.
I want to say, “Twenty years from now, you won’t worry so much about this. Like precipitates in a Chem II experiment, love and your personalities will seem somehow to have settled and congealed.” I want to tell them, “You’ll quote the Beatles: ‘I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together,'” until I realize that U2 is their Beatles. (A student mentioned to me that he likes U2: “My friends think I’m crazy for listening to that old music,” he confided. Thanks.) I want to confide, “You’ll think to yourself, ‘Love is blindness,’ go to your twenty-year reunion, and find that you had more in common with everyone in your class than you ever realized.” But I know the words will do no more for their shattered hearts (egos?) than such words would have done for mine, and I’ll hope that some day, perhaps they’ll invite me to a reunion.
Reunion
One would think, to some degree, reunions will become a thing of the past in the age of social networking, especially class reunions. After all, part of the fun is to find out what everyone else has been up to; with everyone on Facebook, we already know all of that.
Yet we’re a gregarious species by nature, and looking at pictures on a monitor and chatting by Skype is still no substitute.
So we gather together from time to time to look at old photos
and take new ones. Decades separate the two photos, and children who barely make it to their mothers’ waistline now have children who have children who have children. Even when only a relative handful of them gets together, they fill the frame easily.
Several of them are, for all intents and purposes, strangers. Grandchildren of great uncles, cousins removed by years and geography. Yet just say the word “family” and strangers are no longer so distant, and introductions come easily.
If only we could learn that as species.
Polish Reunions
After the reunion, we headed to Papa’s side of the family for conversation and rest. Everyone was curious by then about Polish reunions.
“They don’t really exist,” K explained.
Why won’t they work? K proposed two simple reasons, both of them quite practical.
First, you can’t get a bunch of Poles together for a meal and have a pot luck. A huge, official gathering requires huge, official food, with proper place settings and a touch of elegance. Everyone would come dressed elegantly. Plastic forks, blue jeans, and cold fried chicken would absolutely, positively, under no circumstances, be permissible. And it would be purely self-inflicted inconvenience.
Second, there’s no way to get everyone there. Significant numbers of Poles still are without a car, and the prospect of carrying food (then again, see above) and family on a bus while everyone is dressed in their best — not a chance.
But reunions do exist: they’re just called “weddings” and “funerals.”