At my uncle's "weekend house" in Walterboro
Growing up as a child in the small town of Walterboro, South Carolina, the annual Thanksgiving family gathering at my grandparents’ house was more like a county fair in terms of attendees than what most people experience when they get together with their family. For most people, their ‘immediate family’ is considered to be those that grew up in their house – usually mom, dad, and siblings. My ‘immediate family’ consisted of my grandparents, their four boys (of which my father was one), their boys’ children, sometimes my grandfather’s brother and his three daughters along with their children, and any other in-laws that might tag along. We did not all live in the same house, but we did all lived nearby, which was not all that different in the end. Accordingly, our family holidays, especially Thanksgiving and Christmas, were always huge and lots of fun!
I remember that the food was always plentiful, my Uncle Walton was always late, the turkey was often cold, the biscuits like hockey pucks, the wives stressed out, the husbands telling war stories over drinks and, mostly, the grandchildren completely oblivious to everything but having fun, running, laughing, screaming and playing with each other. I idolized my oldest cousin… I thought she was the coolest. We used to cheer on the boys playing sports and dance to records until we collapsed. We kids organized little skits, played in the yard, and on one Thanksgiving my grandmother even had us line up and read versus related to the holiday. At the time I honestly did not appreciate the gift my grandparents were giving me – that of family and a place where I would always belong. Now, all these years later, I really get it.
So this year, for the first time with my own husband and child, we packed the family up in Northern Virginia and headed back down south to Walterboro for a Thanksgiving gathering in the tradition of my youth. My Uncle Walton, the reigning and capable patriarch of the clan, recognizing the chance to make something really magical happen this year got busy early on and worked a miracle – we had 100% attendance of all living descendents from my grandparents and all of their families. Yup, it was all the same linage, only the generation had changed. It was wonderful on so many levels. I was truly in heaven, we even had a photographer on hand to photograph the event and it took as long as I remembered and the children were as impatient with the process as I remembered being myself. But what was the most meaningful to me, as I watched on with moist eyes, was my two-year old daughter, completely oblivious to everything, having fun, running, laughing, screaming and playing with the children of my former playmates in the same setting. Never have I seen a better rendition of Ring Around the Rosie and I must say, I love family tradition like I have never loved it before .
