Eight Cousins

Here we are, eight cousins together again after thirty years. That's me with the babies.

As a child my cousins rivaled my parents in claim to my love and attention and getting to all be together again at our family reunion in Shelton was divine. We are the quintessential baby boomers. Initially there were five of us born between 1945 and 1951 (four between 1950 and 1951) with three more, the babies, born during the 1960s and the youngest of which is only two years older than my own oldest child.

It had been thirty years since I’d seen my oldest cousin Steve and I’d never met his lovely wife Linda. She’s a wonderful addition to the family and I am only sorry that they live so far away in Tucson and that we are not free to travel as most of our family is. Most of us are old enough to be retired while my husband and I continue to work “as long as they keep paying me.”

Ours was the generation that had home movies and we enjoyed looking at ourselves as babies on my father’s and my uncle’s movies while eating my grandmother’s pineapple cookies. Uncle Dick was the family historian having put a lot of actual leg work (pre Internet) into tracking down records and graves from Pennsylvania to Missouri and in books even back to England although none of us have gone there. That’s one of my dreams along with visiting Jamestown where our very first ancestors stepped ashore in the New World on the resupply ship for that tiny colony. His daughter Janice has stepped into the breach left by her father’s passing. She has all of his computer records and keeps track of all of us. She also brought pictures her father had identified for her before his passing four years ago.

My cousin Rick helped me straighten out in my mind the whole first cousin, second cousin, first-cousin-once removed thing. It has always confused me and is likely to again since I can’t remember a thing fifteen minutes. Besides solving that mystery, this lovely man, knowing that I’m not big on the beef or pork that was being barbequed for dinner, just for me cooked some of the salmon he’d caught in Alaska. He and his wonderful wife (another Sped Paraeducator) live entirely too far away in Missouri, but Dave and I discovered that it is possible to get to Branson on the train and that’s close enough for them to come get us thus fulfilling my husband’s desire for a train trip and mine to spend more time with them. They live in a house on a bluff over Table Rock Lake, situated so that when on their deck you feel as if you are in a tree house.

Janice, the only other girl in the pack of us and Rick’s sister, was as dear as a sister while we were growing up. Then her parents took her off to Missouri at the end of our junior year and we’ve been playing catch-up ever since. She’s in Idaho now which really ought not and should not be a problem. Now she has a married son in Vancouver, Washington so I hope our state will again claim more of her attention.

Mark, together with his older brother Steve, were always fun when we were altogether at our grandparents. Having no sisters they were unaware that tormenting was the order of the day. They were amiable companions and a distraction to Janice’s brother who delighted in nettling us. Both of them contain their father’s gentle heart and he was a favorite of mine.

It was a big deal when the babies came along. I was nine when Danny was born. Bobby came along two years later and Tommy only two years before my own daughter. Unfortunately I don’t know them as well as the four others, but on the occasions that I am able to be with them and to see their children (and now even a grandchild) I am glad to be related to them and wish I saw them often.

Steve commented that he might not be available for another reunion if we wait 30 years. I hope we do not. My grandson is likely to be an only child and my hope for him is to have wonderful memories and relationships with his cousins. I know how important that will be to him in the years to come.

Aunt Mary's Coleslaw

With only another day until our Frieze Family Reunion the family is beginning to arrive in Shelton and I am getting ready to join them on Saturday. I made my grandmother’s pineapple cookies (after discovering I was out of flour and having to run to the store) which are stacked in Tupperware that dates back to at least the Johnson Administration. My next project is Aunt Mary’s Coleslaw.

Although Aunt Mary won’t physically be with us for the reunion, I feel sure she would have made her coleslaw so deciding to make a big bowl seemed like a natural. When my middle son accompanied me to Missouri he ate nearly an entire bowl of it the first night we were at my aunt and uncle’s house. It’s different than your run of the mill coleslaw. In the cookbook my aunt’s family put together she submitted this recipe as “King’s Coleslaw.” I have no idea where that name came from. It might have been a play on Old King Cole or it could reference the King family of Dade County, MO where the Friezes come from. At my house it’s “Aunt Mary’s Coleslaw.”

When I was going through my father’s home movies I was delighted to see my lithe aunt picking strawberries in the family patch on Whidbey Island in the 1960s. I thought again about what a strong person she was—strong physically and strong emotionally. It is easy for me to see why my father’s older brother would have been attracted to her. Her long graceful fingers could not only pick strawberries, blackberries and mushrooms, she could use them knead the best bread you ever put in your mouth. She hand pieced quilts and raised two of the most delightful human beings. She had patience in abundance and an infectious laugh. She didn’t like having us kids under her feet. “Now you kids go on out and play in the road.” We knew she didn’t mean that literally, but I can hear her voice just as clear as if it were yesterday and not fifty years ago. This spring I was delighted when the white lilac I planted in her and my uncle’s honor produced its first blooms.

If you want to take tangy coleslaw to your own family gathering try Aunt Mary’s Coleslaw. Here it is from a piece of stationary on which she wrote it out in the summer of ‘02:

Aunt Mary’s Coleslaw

1 med. cabbage, shredded; 1 large onion (red or white—red makes it festive), ¾ sugar.

Put in a large bowl in layers of cabbage and onions until all are used up. Pour ¾ C. sugar over mixture and set in refrigerator for 1-2 hours.

Dressing: ¾ vinegar, 1 ½ tsp. salt, 1 T. mustard.

Bring the above to a boil. Add 1 C. oil and bring to a boil again and add 1 tsp. celery seed.

Pour over cabbage mixture while hot. Let stand overnight. Will keep for several days. Aunt Mary said on her directions, “I put mine in a large Tupperware bowl with a tight seal and turn it over several times. That mixes it up easily.”

Hey, I have a Tupperware bowl as old as the pieces holding the cookies!

Preparing for a Sentimental Journey

I’m excited about our up-coming family reunion. The Frieze Family hasn’t been altogether in more years than I can remember. Doubtless there will be a few missing, but we are anticipating some 30 people to arrive at my aunt and uncle’s house in Shelton on August 8th. Compared to my husband’s family that is a pittance. The Haecks get together regularly and Christmases alone are usually 46 now with my granddaughter Lydia. The Friezes, on the other hand, are dispersed well enough and the product of my grandparents five children, compared to my in-laws seven, that we are seldom altogether in one place as we were in the days of my childhood.

Last summer I had my father’s home movies put on DVD by an outfit in Florida which I would not recommend. The frustrating process took three months instead of the promised three weeks and the result was lousy. I have no interest in turning over my father’s 16 mm film to those people again and was just grateful just to get the reels back. If you have home movies that you wish to preserve, find a company that is local. The biggest problem I faced with the movies is that my usually meticulous engineer father did not put the dates of the film on the cans so the DVD ended up higglty pigglty. If you are in the market for preserving your family home movies look for someone local and with more than their own website to recommend them.

This actually brings me back to the pending reunion. There are clips on my father’s home movies of my aunts, uncle, cousins and grandparents. There are scenes of us five older cousins in 1953 at a summer picnic in my grandparent’s back yard in Vancouver, WA. My favorite frame is of my grandfather standing with four of us grandchildren in his wheel barrow and the oldest standing between the handles. There are clips of us picking strawberries on my uncle’s farm on Whidbey Island in the 1960s and of the ‘babies”—the cousins that came along in that decade. There is even a “reel” of my very young not-yet-my-parents on Guam in 1946. Color 16 mm film was expensive and precious so my father’s clips were only about a minute a piece.

I spent Thursday watching this silent DVD (the idiots at Florida Home Movies were supposed to add the sound of a projector and didn’t), pausing when I found something I thought the family would enjoy to note the minute, before going on. I have a list of the places where there are things that might interest my cousins. Out of an hour and a half there’s about 20 minutes of the DVD that I think my cousins will be interested in (not counting a segment that is of a test flight of the B52), but those brief scenes from when our parents and grandparents were alive and young are cherished, perhaps because of their scarcity.

My next project toward our family reunion is baking a batch of my grandmother’s pineapple cookies.

Reunions

Summer is frequently the time for reunions whether they are high school or family. Dictionary.com defines the word “reunion” as “a gathering of relatives, friends, or associates at regular intervals or after separation.” Obviously these people know neither my family nor my graduating class since we do not reunite at regular intervals. What were the odds that either one would plan a reunion for the same decade little own the same day?

My high school class—Sammamish class of 1969—has been abysmal at having reunions. There hasn’t been one in 20 years. This year it has been—gulp—40 years for my husband and me. And wouldn’t you know when they finally decided to have one it landed on the same day as a reunion my family, also abysmal at reunions, is having!

It only took me a “New York minute” to decide which reunion I’d go to. Last summer I had my father’s home movies put on CD. My favorite scene is of a family reunion circa 1953 with my grandfather pushing his five grandchildren in a wheelbarrow. It is perfect snapshot of post-WWII Americana worthy of Norman Rockwell. I love it. It fulfills my fantasy of our family.

So I am forgoing the high school picnic in favor of a family barbecue. I never like to pass up an opportunity to show off my children, daughters-in-law, and my amazing and beautiful grandchildren. I want to see if my family can see the faces of those we’ve all loved in the faces of my grandchildren. I can.

I would like to think that we all have many more years to get everyone together, but the reality is that we are neither young nor well organized. This will probably be it. I’m making my grandmother’s pineapple cookies and getting my camera fixed so that I can document this reunion for the babies the way my father documented ours so many years ago. The baby babies won’t remember, but the five-year-olds may. Hey, I was only two in 1953 and I have memories of that day.