Life has a way of sneaking back around us and reminding us that everything is ephemeral. We plan and hope our best life will unfold, then we take each day as it comes. Some days are awesome and sunny–the kind of days one hopes to live over and over again. Then there are cloudy days; they seem to come way too often.
Today is one of those days that forces us to look back, back to sunnier days of youth and family reunion picnics in the park.
In their book Double Take, Vi Parsons and Violet Carr Moore tell how their mamma, Nancy, would make elaborate plans for the family’s Easter picnic. Easter (as other holidays) was a time for family gathering. For weeks beforehand, Nancy would make new dresses for the girls and coordinate the dinner fixings. Her older children would arrive with their own families–potluck dishes in hand, and sometimes extended family and friends from other cities and states would make the journey. But as family members grew older and many relocated to distant communities, gatherings were much less frequent. Over time, family reunions took the place of Easter and holiday picnics, and the picnics, in turn, became a part of the family story passed down to the younger generations.
At the 1981 Carr Family Reunion, a story was captured in a snapshot. Aunt Nadine Tripp in mid-swing, frozen in time. Grandpa John Carr had long since joined the “Big Reunion,” as Ann Carr would say. Grandma Carr lay wordless in a hospital bed, no longer able to participate in family gatherings. In another five years, Grandma would reunite with Grandpa at that Big Reunion Picnic on the other side. So, we all, natural and in-law alike, gather in the warmth of nephew/uncle/cousin/brother/dad Lee Roy Carr’s brighter-than-the-sun smile and listen to the comforting stories of yesteryear and of so-and-so …. Their stories serve as a moment of re-membering those who have come and gone before us. Our elders weave together names and accounts of relations that we juniors know by heart, but whose faces most of us have never known. We sit in wonderment as our family is brought back to life, one story at a time. Today is one of those sunny days.
Easter Sunday has arrived, 2023, and all but three of Grandpa and Grandma Carr’s ten children have joined their parents at the Big Reunion. Lee Roy’s smile has transitioned into waves of photons traversing the galaxy and bathing every cloudy moment with the hope of sunshine, even if filtered through the trees of time. Nadine turned 91 on March 31st. This Easter Sunday, the siblings did not gather. The twins text and FaceTime as their older sister Nadine swings back and forth between today and eternity. Hospice tells us that she is in transition. Aunt Gladys, who went ahead in 2014, whispers an invitation softly in the wind. “Everyone is here,” she says, as she extends her hand to Nadine.
We spent this morning FaceTiming with Mother Vi. She told us comforting stories of yesteryear and of so-and-so…. We didn’t talk with Aunt Violet — she has been in the hospital since last Tuesday and updates us via text.
Soon, our generation will be the elders, resurrecting for future generations the family they could never know except through our recitations. But our stories will be better. We can re-generate family in ways our elders could not. We can put faces to the names and stories because our elders — Mother Vi, Aunt Violet, Aunt Nadine, and Others — have so diligently preserved our family records in chronicles and images.
After we disconnected from FaceTime, we set ourselves to the task of integrating Mother Vi’s websites into jnkdavis.com. This website is our Easter Day, the virtual picnic table set for future generations to gather, to swing in the cool breeze, and to listen to stories (both sunny ones and cloudy ones) of yesteryear and of so-and-so.
May this special day, and the many days to come, entice you to join the picnic through the books and stories that have been so carefully and deliberately set before us all. Whether you are family, friend, or a passing visitor, we hope our family tale encourages you to preserve your own family stories in words and images. We invite you to start your holiday memories with Mother Vi Parson’s tales of yesteryear: