When the Relatives Came

When my children were young one of their favorite books to check out from the library was titled When the Relatives Came. I think they loved this book so much because it reminded them of when our relatives came to town. We are fortunate to live in the same town as my maternal grandmother. Over the course of a year we usually get to see most of our relatives who come into town to visit my grandmother. Having the relatives in town was always a festive event; it still is. Today the relatives came. Tomorrow more are coming. Tomorrow my grandmother turns 102.

Tonight I had the relatives over for dinner. It was a small crowd by our standards – sixteen relatives. Tomorrow thirteen more are arriving. When we get together we eat, we drink, we tell stories, we laugh, we cry. We remember those who are no longer with us and we remember those who couldn’t make a cross-country trip. We weave the threads of our family quilt, we strengthen our ties to each other while we celebrate our past and look to our future. We compare our skinny legs and our receding hairlines. We comment on which of us look like our grandfather’s “people” and which of us resemble our maternal side. We question how a teen could grow two feet since the last time we saw her and marvel at how our children resemble the children of our cousins.

The stories we tell are family lore. The stories we tell have been told hundreds of times and will be told countless more. The younger family members listen intently as we recount the tales of prim Aunt Opal’s secretly sipped boiler-makers, or about the cousins putting red dye in the hotel fountain, or Uncle Sam’s hitch-hiking trip from Texas to New York. They listen closely because they know one day it will be their turn to tell the tales.

We laugh hysterically as we hear the story of Aunt Mary putting a department store mannequin, complete with blonde wig, in bed with Uncle Sam. Uncle Sam is awakened the next morning by his mother (my grandmother) swatting him with a broom and yelling, “How dare you bring this hussy into my house?” The next story will bring tears to my eyes and to each of my aunt’s as we discuss my mother’s illness and death and the subsequent discovery of a child she gave up for adoption; the “child” we found fifteen years ago and who is now just one more relative with tears in his eyes as he listens to the story of his birth and adoption that took place fifty-five years ago.

We eat second helpings and pour another drink and tell some more stories. It’s all part of our version of the story of When the Relatives Came.