Kahrs, Lexie, Anders

       Four (or possibly five) generations were represented at the 70th Annual Williams Family Reunion on Sunday.  The oldest was Virginia Williams Jones at 95 and the youngest was her two-times-great-nephew Anders Jeanne Bemis at three-and-a-half months.  Representation through the ages was not especially even – more grey heads and toddlers than teens, for sure.  Even so, it was an impressive gathering.
       I especially enjoyed the interaction of the young and the old.  During Father Tom’s Invocation and, later, during the Benediction were the only times of complete quiet.  I was impressed that even the little kids picked up on the unusual silence and stopped whatever they were doing.  I heard only one whoop of joy and saw a grown-up finger raised to closed lips.  It was enough.  Silence once more.
      Not quite so much, though, during the Business Meeting which was mostly the traditional tribute to the past year’s transitions – deaths, births, and marriages – and a shout-out to whoever had come the farthest for the Reunion.  This year it was Jim Hook, Anders’ grandpa, who came all the way from Nigeria where he had been working for several months.
     During all that interesting report, a toddler in front of me was discovering how to pop balloons.  He wasn’t very good at it yet, so he only managed to pop two of them.  His dad deftly put the remaining one behind him, out of sight, and so when the second one popped the little boy handed the pieces to his father and asked plaintively, “Again?”
     “We can’t do it again,” his dad said.  “It’s broken now.” 
     There was a look of complete mystification on the boy’s face.  But then he discovered how latex stretches and he had another distraction to deal with while the adults carried on.  Life was good.
     During lunch, Dorothy’s five-year-old grandson, Morgan, noticed that the watermelon slices had “black seeds!”  He wasn’t too sure about those or even about the watermelon until his older-by-a-generation cousin Kris said, “Oh good!  We can have a watermelon seed spitting contest!”
     So, there they were – four adults ages forty-something to seventy-something and one about-to-enter-kindergarten-kid, spitting seeds over the rhododendron hedge.  Or trying to.  It had to go “clear over” said Morgan, and he ran around to the other side periodically to check.  “It doesn’t count if it just goes in the bushes,” he said.
     “You have to curl your tongue.  Like thith,” Kris said.  “And it’s better if you make obscene noises, too,” said Barbara.  “Try two at a time,” said Curtis.  And so it went.  I couldn’t help but wonder what each of those adults had learned over the years at previous reunions and what Morgan and the rest of the little children would be teaching their progeny years from now.
     And, one other thing.  Dogs were noticeable by their absence.  There was only one small white dog with huge ears present and mostly he sat in the shade well away from the throng.  He looked to be well beyond puppyhood and had obviously been socialized long ago.  He knew his place.  Bravo!