Espy Family Gathering, 1918

When the email arrived yesterday from my second cousin Nick, my first thought concerned that old adage about blood being thicker than water. “Not in this family,” I thought. Nyel said maybe it was a case of drinking too much sagebrush tea – a remedy his mother recommended each spring for thinning the blood in preparation for the hot summer ahead.

Nick’s email said he wasn’t coming up in July after all. Too much fire danger where he lives in central Oregon. Has to stay and protect his property. I must say that was the most innovative reason for not coming to our Family Reunion, scheduled for two weeks hence. And the most disappointing. The entire thing was Nick’s idea in the first place and he was the one that wouldn’t let it go… even as the regrets came rolling in.

The New Hampshire relatives said they are now too old to travel which I tried to understand even though they are somewhat younger than I. Their close relatives in North Carolina and California said that if New Hampshire contingent wasn’t coming, neither were they – definitely ominous-sounding with regard to any future get-togethers.

Espy Family Reunion 1964

The Red House cousins are all busy with things far from Oysterville. Nick’s sister, also from Oregon, will be celebrating her daughter’s birthday in Los Angeles… and so it goes. Of all the third generation R.H. Espy descendants – originally there were 23 of us, though only 21 of us are still living – just my second cousin Ruth and I will be at this ‘Reunion’ (which I had actually downgraded to a ‘Gathering’ as the numbers grew smaller.)

Meanwhile, though, some of our third cuzzins – descended from R.H. Espy’s brother William ‘Kentuck’ Espy – have rented the Oysterville Guest House and are having their own family get-together that same weekend. From the get-go it was planned that they would come for the Big Family Picnic at our house on ‘Reunion/Gathering’ Saturday. I understand that their numbers have also dwindled since the plan was first hatched, so we have downgraded to a ‘Little’ Family Picnic!

Espy Fsmily Reunion, 2009

We are also hoping that our third cousins on the Jefferson side of the family bring their 101-year-old father from Portland. He came to our reunion on the occasion of the Oysterville Sesquicentennial in 2004 and he and my mom – at ages 91 and 92 respectively – enjoyed being the oldest members present. I think it was at that reunion, too, that Ruth’s father John pointed out that of the eighteen R. H. Espy grandchildren, only he and mom were still alive.

Those eighteen first cousins remained close all their lives. Not that they had many actual “reunions” like the Ilwaco Williams Family does. (I think this Labor Day will mark the 73^rd Annual Williams Reunion!) The Espys have always reunited periodically but not very regularly – and apparently not this year. Must be that sagebrush tea.