Aliens, Critters, and Dinosaurs

The Reunion

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The Reunion

         Family reunions stink. Cousin Ben and his younger brother, Sammy, usually manage to do something mean when nobody can see them, Aunt Emma nearly always has to tell my mother (in front of me) about her daughter, Marti, who gets the best grades in her class, snotty cousin Jenna sticks out her tongue and tells me how dumb I am, and Grandpa pulls out his fiddle and plays songs that he makes up about the people in our family. It’s so embarrassing!

         This Saturday was probably going to be no different than all the others -- except, maybe worse…

          It started out with Mom making me wear the pink t-shirt that Grandma just bought me – the one that said, “Girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice.”

         Then Mom said my jeans were dirty, and I’d have to wear white shorts! How could anyone go to a picnic reunion in white? Around me, white lasted all of five minutes before needing heavy bleach.

         At breakfast I spilled some strawberry jam on the shorts. Mom sponged it off, and I had to get in the car with a dark water stain in front. My brothers, of course, immediately started laughing and yelled out loud enough for everyone in the neighborhood to hear, “Look at that! Chrissy wet her pants!”

         Dad turned around to glare at Jim and Joe, but instead of saying anything to them, he looked at me and said, “Well, doesn’t Chrissy look pretty?”

         I hate "pretty".

         I socked Jim when Dad repositioned himself to start the car. I would have punched Joe, too, but he ducked. Dad pulled out into the street and then started lecturing me about “proper behavior for a young lady”.

         I hate that expression, and I told him so. Mom gave me one of those looks. Where do parents get those looks? Do they practice them, or are they handed out at the hospital with the baby bottles?

         As soon as we arrived at the park, Jim and Joe pounced out of the car and ran off to play. I’d brought a book about horses I intended to go off and read, but Mom made me help cart all the food stuff over to the table. Naturally, as I was carrying the watermelon slices, the sticky juice dribbled down onto my white socks.

         Before I could escape, the worst of my cousins zeroed in on me. “What’ya do, wet yourself?” Ben said right off. Mom was standing there so I couldn’t pay him back, but I glared plenty.

         Jenna, the wicked witch of the family, marched over and acted really happy to see me. (She always does that in front of my mother.) I left to greet Grandma and Grandpa who’d just arrived.

         “Oh, look at how cute you look!” said Grandma first thing.

         “Whoa! Would you look at Chrissy turning red!” Ben taunted, just before he kissed Grandma.

         Grandpa was opening the potato chips, and of course, that brought all the cousins closer. I grabbed a handful and split.

         I was happily reading my book about lunging your horse when Jenna came up and disturbed me.

         “Your mother wants you,” Jenna said in her nastiest sing-song voice.

         “Why?”

         “How would I know? She’s your mother.”

         I should have guessed. Grandpa was starting to play his fiddle. Of course, we had to gather ‘round and hear his newest songs:

                   Miranda’s in her newest dress.
                   Pretty, she is, I must confess.
                   Old Bob sure's got a sweet little wife,
                   Certainly has a happy life.

                   Oh, there’s my Chrissy in her little “t”.
                   Doesn’t she look like a cute little bee?
                   It’s nice to see her dressed like a girl.
                   If only she’d grow a couple of curls.

         I couldn’t take it. I knew I was supposed to stay to the end and then clap for all Grandpa’s wonderful rhymes, but Ben was doing his grinning routine, and Sammy, Jenna, and all the others were gloating at my embarrassment. I bolted.

         I found my way to the tallest tree in the park. I scaled it as if tigers were chasing me. I never noticed until it was too late that weirdo Clement, the oldest of the cousins, was already up in the same tree.

         I was crying and never even heard him climbing down to my level, not until he dropped onto the limb I was sitting on.

         “What’s the matter? Grandpa singing his rhymes again?” Clement asked, handing me a clean white hankie.

         I took it, blew, and wiped. I nodded and prepared to climb down to go find another tree, but I froze when Clement added, “Grandpa's songs used to make me cry, too, but I never told him that. One day he said that songs were magic. He told me that if we sang them, sometimes they would come true. Grandpa let me know that it was time for me to write my own magic. So I did.”

          “You wrote a song? Not that one that Grandpa always sings about you!”

         “Yes. I wrote that. And one of these days, I’ll change it. 'Cause that’s what’s great about a song. You can change the magic anytime you want.”

         I knew his song by heart. It was the only good poem Grandpa ever fiddled. I recited it to show that I remembered:

                   Clement has a light inside
                   As glowing as a mile is wide.
                   He shines that light for us to see
                   The person he's going to be.

         “It’s not very good, Chrissy,” Clement laughed. “I’m not a poet, but it’s better than the things Grandpa used to say. You know what he told me once? He said, 'I play the fiddle, and the poetry flows out, but you’re the ones who have to supply the magic.' ”

Clement suggested that we write a poem for me. In the back of the book that he’d been reading, he wrote down what we came up with:

                   Chrissy is full of dreams
                   Of horses and moonbeams.
                   Someday she’ll be more than eight,
                   And then life will be oh, so great.

         It was fun plugging in rhymes like Grandpa always did, but I laughed when the poem was finished. It was kind of silly, yet, I liked it.

Clement tore the page out of his book and handed the paper to me. Then together we climbed down from the tree and went in search of lunch.

         In the afternoon, I handed the poem to Grandpa. He raised his eyebrows and grinned at me. “Ah, so you’ve been making magic, huh?”

I hugged him, and then he played my song.

Maybe Clement's right when he says that reunions aren’t really all that bad.

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