prairie point

My grandmother died forty years ago. Up till that time no one needed to organize a family reunion. She had ten children and most every weekend one or more were at her house. All you had to do was show up and there was an instant family reunion.

When I was young we were there about one weekend every four to six weeks. There were always cousins there and we would play outside on the big covered porch or in the winter time in the parlour, where sometimes my grandmother would have a quilting frame suspended from the ceiling.

After grandmother died a couple of my aunts started to organize annual pot-luck dinner get-togethers in the Spring. They would bring big albums of photos and copies of records from their geneaological research.

The aunts have almost all passed away now and most of my generation has lost interest in the reunion. The cousins I remember from childhood show up once in a while but they are scattered around the country and have their own families to keep track of. We still had about thirty-five people last year though including children.

For the last several years the task of organizing this event has been mine. That in itself says something. I am one of the world’s worst organizers and a very poor socializer, so if it has come down to me to get a social event together, you know how desparate the situation must be. Still there are a few older ones who look forward to it.

Sunday we will do it again. We are meeting at the Prairie Point Cemetery, just down an unpaved country road from the old family farm and the site where all four of my grandparents were laid to rest and two of my great-grandparents. It is a place with lots of memories. I’ll let you know how it turns out.