“List each of your aunts and uncles and tell one thing about each of them,” the slip of paper says.
Yesterday I did blood relatives. Today I’ll tackle the spouses.
I’ll also recommend family reunions. Whether you are journaling or not, I strongly recommend to readers that they put together a family reunion if feasible. After we grow up, cousins disappear, scattering to jobs in distant places. The family events that brought us together are complicated by geography, work schedules and finances. Setting aside a regular summer week-end can help us to combat this separation and reconnect.
The spouses on my mother’s side:
Marvin — He always had a beer in his hand in my memory. Loud drinking happened when we visited, not the norm in my life but something my dad did seem to enjoy.
Gordon — He ate the stuffing without complaints, worked hard, and helped raise four fine cousins. I wish I could have made it to his birthday party this year.
Larry — A very sharp guy, my dad enjoyed drinking and analyzing the world with Larry. They did some real thinking together.
Lynn — A good and thoughtful man, I always liked the image of Mary riding off on his motorcycle to a new life.
Yvonne — I never knew this aunt, and only vaguely recall an attractive blonde woman from my early childhood. She battled demons for a long time.
My dad’s side:
Marie — She held down the fort in Houston when I was at Rice and housing prices collapsed, giving me a chance to meet this warm and welcoming woman at last.
Orvis’s wife — Orvis married but I never met his wife or wives.
Jack? — To my cousin, I apologize that I’m not sure of your dad’s name, but I never recall meeting him.
Betty — On my life list of regrets, I’ll add the fact that I never flew out to Reno to see Betty when Sam was a baby. She knitted a little green blanket for Sam and I know she would have loved to see the baby. But with the new baby, new life, and all those details to manage, somehow I never put that one together. Betty came out every year of my childhood, bearing gifts and love. (Hippie teenagers did not seem to appeal to her, however.)
Merrill’s partner — No one knew about that side of Merrill’s life, except probably Delois who kept his secrets.
Susie — A likable woman with an Eastern-European, straightforward manner, she always seemed to be working.
Roger — Intelligent and thoughtful, I enjoyed his visits. My folks liked him a lot and he remained my uncle always, even after his divorce from Delois.
Bill — Bill vanished after his divorce from Delois. I had fun hanging out at their house when I was little and his oldest boy gave me an Elvis album. I think we might have been crushing a bit on one another.
Sybil — An honorary aunt, the woman who married my Uncle Roger gets included in this list because she visited us, we visited her, and I had a number of genuine conversations with this physician-aunt, who seemed able to control the colonel in Uncle Roger.
I broke format in this post and made a few thumbnails larger than the others. In truth, many of my aunts and uncles were mere thumbnails in my life, but a few have played bigger parts. The family reunions of the recent past have helped, giving me a chance to talk to aunts and uncles as an adult. For maybe 16(?) years now, my maternal family has been getting together every two years. I know cousins, aunts and uncles much better than I would have otherwise. We party on, filling in recent gaps at picnic tables and lake floats.
I cannot recommend reunions highly enough.
