Gran and B-Paw's 50th
Last June my brother Ben and I were in Kerrville, Texas chilling out getting ready for a bike race. I forget what we were talking about, but we got on the subject of what day it was. We realized that it was my parent’s wedding anniversary and that we hadn’t called them or anything, which made us feel a little thoughtless. But when it dawned on us that it may have been their 50th anniversary (we were having trouble with the math) we just about soiled ourselves. We quickly called them, wished them a happy anniversary and confirmed, much to our relief, that it was anniversary number 49, not 50. Dodged a bullet on that one.
During the ensuing year, my brothers and I went through several cycles of planning to try to align the planets that would get four nuclear families together in the same place at the same time and we finally settled on this past Easter weekend.
We all met at a really nice resort near Bastrop, TX and to sweeten the deal, my dad’s brother and sister also came and celebrated with us. Friday evening we ate BBQ and took the kids to the pool. My boys and my brothers’ kids make a perfect stair-step of seven kids from 17 down to 7 and they all play well together. When it got dark my dad and brothers and I celebrated the manly but unhealthy ritual of collective cigar-smoking. Stories were told - some of them true - and we retired to our rooms to prep for the next day’s events.
My brothers and I woke up dark and early to go out for a bike ride on the park road between two local state parks. The whole ride was only about 25 miles, but very hilly, and for some reason, maybe because we can never take it easy on each other, it occasionally turned into a race and we wore each other out pretty good. We got back to the resort in time to get cleaned up and go out and take pictures. We took family photos with multiple cameras with every conceivable combination of family members (“OK, now all the people who like ranch dressing”) and eventually got all the kids to look like they were having a good time and got some nice shots.
For the next event we went to a meeting room where we did a program to honor my parents. It was mostly planned by my youngest brother, Andy. The idea was that several of us would get up and tell our parents what they’ve meant and mean to us. I guess I had an inkling that it would be an emotional deal, but I had no idea it would turn into such a cry-fest. When you try to pack a half-century of family life into a couple of hours of commemoration, though, you better count on it being very emotional.
We started off with my son, J.D. singing and playing guitar. He did a couple of Avett Brothers songs: January Wedding and St. Joseph’s and did an excellent job. I got up and read a poem I wrote for them. I didn’t look up much as I was reading so I’d have a better chance of holding it together. When I finished and looked around the room, though, there were some teary eyes and quivering chins along with mine. My middle brother, Ben, did a little bit of a combination sermon and speech honoring my parents and he used the perfect combination of gravity and levity and knocked it out of the park. My youngest brother, Andy, showed a slide show with family photos that covered about eighty years. We all sent him photos and he catalogued and organized them all chronologically and set them to music; a huge undertaking. The slide show was really like seeing our lives flash before our eyes. As new pictures popped up we said the names of people out loud as if we were calling to them to wave at us from the screen decades away.
Then Andy surprised us by announcing that he was going to put his nine years of perfect attendance in church choir to good use by singing a song to my parents. Well, when a friend or family member says, “OK, y’all, I’m gonna sing now,” you kind of grit your teeth and get ready for some karaoke-like slaughtering of a song you used to like. He went and pulled the music up on his I-phone and stuck it into the speakers and commenced to singing. And let me tell you, the boy can sing. As Jerry Clower would have said, “He forevermore shelled down the corn – shucked it right on down to the cob.” How do you not know your own brother has a great singing voice? Beats me, but he took us all by surprise.
We went and ate lunch and packed up and headed back to our respective homes. The celebration passed too quickly, but what was said and sung and celebrated will stay with us for a long time.
Some lasting impressions I took away from the weekend:
-All the things my folks did for us and for each other over the past fifty years are staggering. They were (and are) attentive, supportive parents. They were present at so many events all our lives including driving halfway across the country and flying halfway across the world to come see us do things. We owe them more than we could ever repay.
-I have some uber-talented brothers who married tremendous gals and are raising great families.
- I am grateful for the continued health of my parents and their commitment to each other.
-I’m very happy Margaret and the boys were there for the whole thing. One of our planning options fell on a week when our boys were going to be gone on a trip and we were able to change that and now I can’t imagine it any other way. I think the whole weekend helped my sons get their minds around the idea that they’re not just themselves and they’re not just products of their two parents. They’re part of long lines of people who have a great story. So they’ll be a little more aware when they go off to college and high school in the fall they’re not just out there on their own. There’ll be a cloud of witnesses and a family history that follows them.
