Family Reunion!

I'm holding a letter written by my great-great-grandfather!

How cool is that? Where did I get it, you ask? Well let me tell you:

Our family does reunions.

I don't mean one day every ten years or whatever other families who do reunions do. I mean almost every summer of my life my dad and his brothers and sister all get together with all of their kids and grandkids (and now GREAT grandkids) and CAMP for a few days.

Everybody comes to whatever campsite we found in Utah or California or Colorado or wherever we found and sets up in their tents and campers and RVs. We camp by family, like the tribes of Israel in the desert. We even sometimes have commemorative T-shirts made, or have everybody bring a family flag for their area. It's getting to be quite a project to find campsites big enough for all 140+ of us, so now we only go every 2 years.

Wasn't even kidding about 160+. This was last year, each "tribe" in a different color, and there are still about 30 of us that didn't make it that year.

We go hiking, and have craft projects. We build forts, or have whittling contests. We play cards and visit and explore and work together to set up and watch the kids and feed everybody. We always play horseshoes in a big camp-wide tournament. We always have a campfire program at least one of the evenings with a talent show and skits and storytelling, and most other nights we just sit around and talk and sing songs while my dad plays his guitar and try to keep the marshmallow-roasting kids from falling into the fire. 

Lately, reunions have been themed around our heritage.

One year we had a "scout" theme, as our family has been very active in scouting for generations. Another year one of the uncles had a life-size cardboard standup made from his parents' wedding photo, so we could all take pictures with them, dressed up in some of the hats and other clothes they'd worn. 

Uncle D is the oldest, so he's the current patriarch of the family. He'd been trying to find homes for some of the last things from the old house before it got sold, so he'd bring things to reunions for people to take home -- clothing, books, knick-knacks, and the like. 

Uncle D offered me a project.

One reunion about ten years ago he came with a large box full of old family letters, and gave me the assignment of scanning and cataloging them all so they could be preserved and eventually transcribed. I gladly accepted!

Now I spend a lot of my free time scanning and reading a bit from these old letters. The earliest I've found so far is from 1924, with a 2-cent stamp! But this letter is from the farthest-back relative so far. I mean, I have a letter from my grandma's grandpa!

I can't even describe how it makes me feel to touch these and hold them and read them. This connection I get to have (and someday share with the rest of the family) with these relations I've never met in life feels so sacred and humbling. To read my grandparents' letters to each other from when they were only courting. To read my grandma's words, describing to her mother her feelings for this man she'd found to marry:

"You know it seems funny when this LOVE that you hear about all your life, read of and sing of finally happens to oneself. It doesn't seem like things you dream of and imagine all your life can realy[sic] happen and seem so sacred."

To read her descriptions of her young children, so accurate to who they grew up to be (Uncle R being tidy and helpful, Aunt S dressing up and performing in the kitchen, Uncle B terrorizing the house and making a mess and he can't even walk yet!).  To read her letter to her mother -- seven months before my father's birth -- describing symptoms and wondering if she might be pregnant again.

To read crooked little letters from my uncles when they were only boys to their grandpa, talking about what they will buy with the money they got from selling rabbits they bred.

I have this paper window into the past, and it's amazing!

I'm so looking forward to the part of the project where I will be transcribing all these letters instead of only getting snippets as I go, where I can read the whole story. 

Although I know it's not the WHOLE story, of course. Only the piece of it that came before me. It started long long ago, and will continue on forever, and it's such a precious thing to be able to study the few links that came just before mine.

-Goosey