It was a busy weekend here in the land of Jean of Sunny West
Michigan where poor Levi was treated like Cinderella who had to stay home and
keep the home fires burning while I partied---first at a family reunion on
Saturday and then at a ‘Baby Sprinkle’ on Sunday. But don’t feel too sorry for
Levi. Both days he got extra-long walks around the neighborhood as a trade-off
for my guilt and I managed to bag up a huge amount of---well, dog poop and we stopped
at a zillions places to mark where other canines had no doubt marked so I knew Levi
wouldn’t suffer with his legs crossed while I was off in the boondocks seeing
cousins I hadn’t seen in years one day, and toddlers the next.
I was not the oldest person at the reunion but I was the
only one who has documented my mom’s side of the family in writing and as we
sat on a porch overlooking a lake with the youngest generation playing in the
water, questions were swirling around me. Ohmygod, that’s when I realized just
how bad my memory has gotten! I couldn’t answer any of the dates, places and
relationship type questions with any degree of certainty but, thankfully, my
older niece had her copy of the family history book there where we could
fact-checked older me against my younger self. I made a joke about how I research something, put it in
writing and then kick the information out of my brain to make room for more.
But apparently that’s more fact than fiction. I often joke that someday
when I’m living in a nursing home visitors can read my self-published
books to me to remind me of who I used to be. I’m
going to cross-stitch that idea on a pillow so my nieces don’t forget because I
sure will. But seriously, it’s scary to think that a day is coming sooner
rather than later when I won’t remember to come in out of the rain.
Not all of my cousins were at the reunion but the ones I was
the closest with growing up were there---the three girls from two sets of twins. And so was their
mother who now lives in a nursing home. Boy, was she still sharp! I used to
babysit the two sets of twins and what a workout that was. Another cousin who also babysat
them from time to time said we got paid twenty-five cents an hour. You could have held a gun to
my head and I couldn’t have come up with that detail. All around me was chit-chat about everyone's grandchildren and how they are on deck to babysit. I couldn’t add to that conversation having never had kids
but I threw in the mantra I started saying in my mid-twenties. “I won’t babysit
any kids who can’t say, ‘My stomach hurts, I need to go to the hospital.’”
Now, babies scare me but the feeling seems to be mutual. At the Baby Sprinkle only half of
the babies and toddlers in attendance would smile at me without looking
like they wanted to burst out crying. A Baby Sprinkle, in case you’re wondering, is a baby shower for a baby that isn’t a first. In this case, the
mother-to-be is having a girl close on the heels of having two little boys. She
says she’s going to do her best to not let her daughter turn into a tom-boy. I
hope I'll still be around to see how that works out in ten-fifteen years. The mother-to-be has a degree in childhood development and has
the mamma gig down pat. In fact, all of the young mothers in my family seem to
be raising happy and well-adjusted kids.
Being a good mother can’t be said of one of my older cousins
who has passed away. She was the most sadistic and cruel person I’ve ever known and a
couple of her husbands were sexually abusive to her 8-9 kids, all but one were girls. I
babysat them, too---when there was only five---so it was interesting to see the oldest one at the reunion,
to find out what happened to her and her siblings after decades of not
knowing. But I made her cry when I told her the thing I remembered the most about
her next-in-line sister is that she’d stop at our house on her the way home from grade
school, climb into my mom’s lap to be rocked and then she’d cry when it was time
for her to go home. Two of the siblings now live on the streets and have for
years. So if you’ve ever wondered why some people choose that life style imagine
how hard it would be to trust those who have tried to intervene, how hard it would be to overcome a childhood
void of any kind of parental love or nurturing and in its place was the worst
kind of mental and sexual abuse.
In my garage hangs a clock that my brother gave me in the
seventies that has written on the face: “All the flowers of all our tomorrows are in the seeds of
today.” Being part of the oldest generation at a family reunion, it was easy to
see the truth in that Indian proverb. It was fully illustrated by the well-loved
toddlers splashing in the water who will no doubt grow up to be well
adjusted human beings like their parents, and by the one person there whose
close-to-the-surface tears and bad memories represented the seeds of yesterday
that never got watered or felt the warmth of the sun. ©
