My father told stories from his childhood of his mother, who looked forward to a family reunion with excitement and joy, knowing she would see aunts, uncles and cousins whom she only got to see once a year.
People were not only very busy in various counties, but money for gasoline was tight due to the Great Depression. The roads were not nearly as nice for travel, making a trek across counties much different than it is for us today.
The story that will stay with me is the one of a trip to Barberton, Ohio, to the home of a dear aunt and uncle. My father’s maternal grandparents, along with his parents and their children, and my dad’s cousin, Donnie Myers, all had laid their coats and hats on the bed in an upstairs bedroom.
Dad’s stern grandmother, Anna, had saved her egg money for quite some time so she could purchase a new hat at Eddie Stover’s Hat Shop and was so proud to wear it that day. The prized hat was perched upon the mound of coats, displaying all the plumes of feathers. On a nearby dresser lay a pair of scissors, and for some absolutely unknown reason, the little boy who would become my dad took the scissors and cut those feathers off of the hat.
My aunt Miriam, who wrote of this in a family history she penned for us all, said, “It was a great day until grandma went up to get her coat and hat. You should have heard the screaming!” The boys were called in and given a test, and my dad did not pass.
Years later, when the household possessions were being cleared out of the farmhouse where my father had been born, a small paper bag was found in an antique desk, and inside it were the feathers. The look on our father’s face when he saw those feathers was simply beyond description. It seemed likely that dad’s mother had saved them to give to her firstborn son at an opportune time.
Today, we gathered for that same family reunion, still connecting the extended family all these years later. My oldest sister brought her twin grandsons, stand-out athletes on our local high school’s undefeated football team. It was fun to watch all the young children drawn to them — some just realizing for the first time that they are family.
A quote by Lina Callahan says, “We are all ghosts. We all carry people inside us, people who came before us.” We keep ancestors alive in treasured memories, and gathering reminds us how blessed we are by family connections.
