Diving down

Going away on a great vacation or a long trip can be like diving deep underwater. Everything above the surface fades away. Nothing can reach you. You are in a different world. You don’t resurface until you come back home.

I began a very long dive after the July 4 party celebrating my independence from gainful employment. Yesterday on the drive home from a sweet family gathering 750 miles away, I kept adding to the preparation list for the Congo trip, which begins in three days, as I watched the sun go down. We had stayed till past noon at sister Sylvia’s, reluctant to leave the sisters and brothers-in-law we see at most once a year because we are scattered coast to coast.

Vic and I enjoyed the silence and he drove like a robot because we decided after a few hours to go all the way home rather than stopping off. We talked about family history. I reviewed the names of his cousins and their spouses, whom I have met over the years but I lose the connections so easily. They were all there, the cousins from his father’s side, a real coup for the organizers, who were as proud of getting the whole family together as my mother would have been. A number of their children and grandchildren showed up, too.

I think I have remained unnecessarily confused about his paternal cousins because there are so many maternal ones. Vic’s mother’s family was large. His father’s family was smaller, just the three sons and a sister who was single and died young. Arthur, Chester, Leidy, and Edith. Each of the sons had a farm. Each of the sons had children and they were all there, at cousin Lois and Frieda’s farmhouse for lunch and the afternoon, and later at cousin David’s house.

Lois and Frieda's farmhouse

Frieda in the pink skirt, Lois in the orange blouse

Lois and Frieda’s 1760 farmhouse stands on the land that belonged to their father, Arthur. They rent out the land and haymaking was going on as we gathered. Leidy, the youngest son and my husband’s father, got the family farm a few miles away. How did that happen? And why did he sell it in the 1960s rather than rent out the land? We discussed those things. Not all the answers are clear. Does it matter?

Obviously, other things mattered more to Vic’s parents than hanging on to the family farm. Economic survival, for one. It is hard to know what will matter to you as you grow older, or what will matter to your children. 

Video games matter, but so do wagon rides

Cousin Lois has researched ancestors back to the 16th century. Chris and Bethany review the history.

Our children, who were present at this gathering only briefly through FaceTime, always loved going to Lois and Frieda’s farmhouse, with its foot-thick walls and whiff of old age and sweeping vista down to the creek. Joanna would love to have a place like that. The house where her father grew up has been renovated by its current owner into a magazine-worthy modern version of its authentic self. None of us could afford to buy it if it were for sale. The owner has graciously given us tours.

The to-do list for Congo gets longer, then shorter as I tick things off, then longer again. This time I may be incommunicado for most of the time that I am there. The electronic connections will be extremely uncertain so I will dive deeper than usual. I will resurface after August 1.