Family

My mother and two of my young adult children braved a trip to Maine in a sedan without air conditioning on a hot and muggy August day with me for a maternal side family reunion. My mother is one of seven children from a French-Canadian family. One sibling has passed away, one lives in the western part of the country, and five were present today. They produced a total of twenty-six children. I am one of those. Close to twenty of us, my siblings and cousins, showed up today. They're all good people. We got reacquainted, told some old stories, looked at photographs, and silently marveled at how our cousins had become their parents. There's a lot the old ones don't remember anymore. 

I thought about a family with all of its important milestones, all the tragedies, all the triumphs, all the remarkable moments along the way. And I thought about how we end up sitting in a chair smiling blankly not knowing the significance of the other smiling people gathered around. Understanding only that they are significant.