Normally, at 7:46 on a Sunday morning, I would be poking Bell, trying to get her up so we could get ready for church. This Sunday morning finds me snuggled into the recliner, coffee laced with rum and cream in hand, while Jack and Bell are still mostly asleep on the air bed where they did their weekly living room camp out. The windows are glazed with ice and the weather can't decide if she wants to sleet or rain. The forecast promises that I will have at least a glaze of ice to contend with later so no churching for us.
The animals have been very unwilling sent out to do their morning thing. The tv sits silent. The lamps are dark. The only sign of life is the occasional sound from the coffee maker. My thoughts drift, reviewing the week, thinking of the stories we make.
Perhaps nostalgia is to blame, but my favorite moment Christmas Day was picking pecans. After dinner but before presents and dessert, my dad asked if anyone wanted to go shake the pecans trees. My mother and sister declined, having already picked the day before, and Ian was waiting on his girlfriend to get there, but the rest of us loaded up and went down to the creek bottom where dad had cleared areas under some of the trees. Soon, the kids were playing some convoluted game involving nuts. Tucker was up in a tree shaking the limbs while the the other men moved tarps around and made burn piles of fallen limbs and Ben's friend Crystal and I scavenged for nuts that had fallen before we got the tarps down. This sounds so mundane, but we were working and visiting and laughing. It was a Wilson thing. I thought of all the times when I was a child that after a meal, Grandpa would load everyone up, taking us down to the creek bottom where we would cut wood and pick pecans. Sometimes, we would, instead, shoot clay pigeons if the town cousins brought some or bottles and cans if they didn't. If it had been a white Christmas, someone would hook the big sled to the tractor and pile the children on for a ride. Looking back, maybe Grandpa was just getting us out of the house so the women could have a bit of peace, but sometimes the women came too. Whether we were working or playing, we were together, all these strands of family that saw each other only once or maybe twice a year. There are a lot of family pictures down on that creek bottom, smoky with bonfires and ringing with laughter.
My heart hurts to think that those days are gone. The strands of our family have scattered like leaves swept by the winds. With my aunts and uncles gone, there just isn't a reason for the family to gather anymore in that part of the state from which we ventured out.
Friday afternoon was a different day, but it was day of promise for this new family we are, this family of Wilson children now bringing our own children home to grandma's house on the farm. Later as we sat for presents and desserts and playing with Tuck's baby, I was satisfied with easy flow of conversation around me even as we had two new comers to the group. We will create our stories.
Stories in general are the other thing I have loved this week. Jack and I have been together in some form or fashion, first as friends then later as a family, for eighteen years. Even when we were just friends, he was my anchor in so many ways. So few people are able to build a story, write their own family mythology. . People fall in and out of relationships carelessly and those relationships crumble. Loved ones die. Others haven't yet found a soulmate. I am lucky to have not only found mine, but been by his side long enough to have a little bit of history. We have spent a lot of time lately saying "remember when . . ." Bell sometimes seems bored by all this reminiscing, but she also says " tell me about the time when . . ." I love that we have built this history. The time we stole a cedar tree. The time we got lost on the mountain. The time I threw flowers out the window. The time we . . . The time . . .
As we drove south Friday, I held Jack's hand while he drove, easy in the silence between us, satisfied with thinking of all the stories we have shared, pondering the stories we will make in the coming year. Our time together is nothing compared to the lifetime my grandparents and his parents have spent together, but it is a good beginning to the lifetime of stories ahead.
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