Reunion

When I was a kid we went to the Holmes family reunion in Oklahoma. My dad’s mother was a Holmes’ before she was a Wood. The Holmes’ were less fun than the Wood’s and the Wood’s were no fun at all.

The day started out heavy: hot biscuits with churned butter, sausage the size of pancakes, pancakes the size of hubcaps, bacon as thick as a Butterfinger, eggs fried in bacon grease, red-eye gravy, potatoes, grits and coffee. Grease…is the word.

Boys and girls couldn’t swim together. I didn’t understand this. We were cousins. Then again, this was Oklahoma. The boys swam first, right after lunch. Why should girls be the only ones with cramps? We swam in the river in long sleeves, jeans and tennis shoes. We sank like stones, but we did not lust after each other.

I don’t know what the girls wore. I hid in the hedge once, but my aunt Nella found me and pinched my arm all the way to my grandfather.

We had church every night and when I say church I don’t mean four verses of “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” in a brick building. The ceiling was stars and the floor was grass. There were guitars, drums, tambourines, banjo and bass…singing and shouting, dancing in the spirit, rolling in the aisles, and speaking with other tongues. It was a trip.

I am 60 now and my life hasn’t worked out the way I’d hoped, but when worse comes to worse I still see those Oklahoma stars, and every face around the table.

Sometimes I borrow their faith when I don’t have much of my own.