Family Matters (“Matters” Is A Verb) Part 2

This week’s post is Part Two of a three-part series written by me to my children and is a continuation from last week.

Go HERE to read “Family Matters: Matters is a Verb, Part 1” if you missed it last week.

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Family Reunions  were the best part of “going home” when we made our trips “back home.”

Our families genuinely enjoyed being together. I remember a Christmas gathering at Grandma Hertzler’s farm (colored photo above), probably in the late 1950’s. Most of our trips were made in the summer.  We grew in numbers! There were twenty eight  cousins on your Grandma’s (Hertzler) side and twenty-three cousins on your Grandpa’s (Longenecker) side.  With that many, we often picnicked in the meadow of one of my uncle’s farms or a state park.

A favorite memory is three days at my Aunt Esther, Grandpa’s older sister, and Uncle Andy’s farm (black and white photo above.   A stream meandered through the meadow from one end to the other. We cousins built dams across that little stream – believing we could create a small pond for swimming, or at least big enough for wading. Of course, we never got beyond the big-enough-for-wading point.

Annual trips “back home” to see my cousins became my “normal” during my growing-up years. Our family made close friends (who became our “family”) in places far away from “back home” in Pennsylvania – in Dixie, AL, and Morton, IL. As a pastor/missionary kid, it became my “normal.” Inevitably, we cousins lost regular contact with each other in our college and adult years while busy raising our families.

I’m glad you children got to know your Hiestand, PA, cousins when we lived there in the late 1970’s.   While we visited my parents in Montana and my brother a few times in Montana, but the cousins were small children. By the time they grew up, you were establishing your own families.  I wish we had helped you keep in contact with them.  It was easy to forget how much family m, until you realize for yourself how much they truly matter. (which i will talk about in the next letter to you.  

When we (you kids and us) moved to Chicago, our immediate families were hundreds of miles away.  We realized that families might live far away as well.  Gerald, you and Jill moved to Nebraska and started your family before you returned to Illinois. Todd, you and Melanie created your home in Pennsylvania and now Oregon. Scott, you brought Jill to the Chicago area. For each family who would want their kids living close to them, there is likely another family wishing the same thing.  Besides not being a fair expectation on our part, it would be unreasonable in the mobile society in which we live.

In short, we embrace your “home” where ever it is.

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In March 2009, your great Aunt Lois (the one who called all of us her favorites) and Uncle Elmer invited the girl cousins to their condo on Longboat Key in Florida. We came from Texas, Minnesota, Illinois, and Pennsylvania to spend time in one place for the first time in years. We spent a laughter-filled 2 1/2 glorious days together. That Saturday, we laughed and told stories all morning.

After lunch, we laughed and told more stories.  Aunt Lois was certain they would be evicted from their condo because of all the laughter and noise.

That weekend in March reconnected us in ways we didn’t know we needed. That September, your Grandma Longenecker died, and several of them came to the funeral to be with me.  We cousins committed to getting together again.  And we made it happen a couple of years later.

The Longenecker Cousins’ Reunion July of 2011.

There’s your Grandpa Longenecker in the middle between his sister Lois (the one who called us her favorites) and Uncle Elmer, right in the front. Your dad and I are over on the right-hand side (me in purple, dad in gray.) This was the “fun picture. If you look closely, you see Uncle Elmer giving your Grandpa bunny ears. I guess some kids never grow up!

Through Facebook, I  reconnected with some Hertzler cousins and in the spring of 2013, suggested we get together again.  It had been many years since I had been with most of them.

Below is the result;

Hertzler Cousins Reunion May 2013 at Slate Hill Mennonite Church where Grandma Longenecker grew up and where she and Grandpa Longenecker got married April 5, 1947.

Right there in the middle in the second row from the bottom is Grandma’s sister Janet (in the gray sweater) and her brother Maurice – the only two siblings left in Grandma’s family, out of nine nine living children.  (Baby Iva died when she was only nine  months old) . I am in the pink top, right in the middle.

Your Dad stayed home and took care of Grandpa Longenecker so I could go. (Not all men would be that helpful in caring for their elderly father-in-law. Your dad is an example of a man with a servant’s heart.)

And I learned something:

These reunions changed the distance between us
not the miles, but the connection.

We had grown up and changed
Yet in many ways, we hadn’t changed at all,
more like an older version of the kids we used to be;
only we now had kids and grandkids of our own.

We were still “us.”

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And soon I would be with my cousins again at your Grandpa’s memorial, and I didn’t want to miss it – the love, the family, especially having no siblings of my own anymore.

Hence the text to my friends, asking them to pray for me to be present and receive love from my family. (See “Family Matters Part 1″ to make the connection)

And it turned out to be more meaningful for me than I could have known.
(to be continued . . . . .)