The wind was whipping last Saturday, so much so that it made a pair of roof turbines sitting atop the Henderson homestead in Piave dance a steady jig. We could hear them periodically, their rusted parts squeaking, as the sounds of a family reunion ebbed and flowed.

Laid out among the metal folding chairs were all the expected ingredients of such an event: deviled eggs, dumplings, fried chicken, butter beans, cornbread, blueberry cobbler, sweet tea (lots of it) and a loaf of white bread. No label reading there.

As usual, we stayed for the whole enchilada, from the blessing of the meal to the re-loading of tables in the back of Cousin So-in-So’s pickup. We did this because our pilgrimage to Mississippi’s eastern edge for the every-October gathering is precious to my husband, a man who lost his father as a teen. For him, it is the opportunity to see his dad in the faces of the uncles that are left that compels him past the wedding invitations and camp dates and other opportunities that inevitably present themselves each year on this weekend.

The reality, though, is it takes more than a bowl of banana pudding to peel back layers of lives lived at a distance. Just ask our nephew, Richard, who joked about not having attended in a while. “When we walked up, people were trying to figure out who we were,” he told me. “They looked at us like we were just driving by, saw a family reunion and decided to stop and eat.”

So par for the course, we waded through the usual pleasantries and weather reports, then met babies, heard a litany of ailments and noticed the absence of the pear tree that our children used to climb. Finally, after removing a few more layers, we got down to what puts the “union” in “reunion”, the only common ground of which we are sure — blood history.

And that’s where we find solid footing each year, in stories from the few remaining branches of a family tree which once supported 19. That number includes Roy, a twin born when his mother was 49.

“Dad had a heart attack right over there,” he said, pointing at a spot near the front porch.

Roy, a great-grandfather, was 6 at the time, but vividly remembers someone carried the family patriarch to the kitchen and laid him on a cot.

“Died before the doctor from Waynesboro could get here,” he finished.

No one, not even 80-something S.J., with the pack of Pall Malls in his shirt pocket, could say when the wood-frame house was actually built. They only know it survived a world war, two hurricanes, the death of a young mother, the Great Depression and several hard years that took a toll on the family logging business. Even so, 16 children (from two mothers) reached adulthood after learning to crawl on its heart pine floors, most bearing the trademark high forehead and a few, sadly, carrying a gene for heart disease. As a result, brothers Hosea and Winston died in their forties. Charlie died early, too, as well as W.J., the father-in-law I never met.

He was the one, they say, who got the whole reunion thing started. Now it’s Roy and his wife, owners of the nearly hundred-year-old home, who keep it going. “We want to know our family,” Roy explained, adjusting his ball cap.

And this family, like many others today, is advantaged in every way that counts, yet still has weathered much from without (cancer, job loss, lifelong disabilities) and much from within (I’ll leave that to your imagination). An annual get-together simply gives members a chance to weather a bit of all that stuff together.

God was good to “set the lonely in families” (Psalm 68:6). I saw it plainly last Saturday while those roof vents danced with the wind.

 

Wesson resident Kim Henderson is a freelance writer who writes for The Daily Leader. Contact her at kimhenderson319@gmail.com.