The More Things Change...

My Uncle David and Aunt Alice celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary on Saturday. My Sweet Baboo and I, my Mom and her sister, my Aunt Betty, represented the western branch of the family at the festivities.

Mom had come over to the Valley Garden Bed & Breakfast and Gardening Dude Ranch on Friday afternoon, while I was still working. She got to enjoy one side of an unintelligible conference call -- trying to figure out why I, as a high powered insurance executive and someone who can barely clean up cat vomit without gagging, would be performing 'triage' on anything -- but was almost certainly more amused by a female cardinal taking a puddle bath in the folds of a tarp, her bright red beak flashing, as I babbled with one of my counterparts in our Rochester office.

Saturday morning, we headed off to Fulton to pick up Betty and then make our way to the village Crown Point, which is on Lake Champlain north of Ticonderoga. I hadn't been in that neck of the woods since I was a kid; I have a vague recollection of being at Fort Ticonderoga with the family when we were younger, but likely 'remember' it from having heard about the trip over the years, rather than as an actual memory. The same was true for My Sweet Baboo -- he hadn't been there in probably at least 25 or 30 years either. For the older gals, they remember the area differently, as my grandparents had lived in the neighborhood at some point; Mom & Dad also had stopped in that neck of the woods on trips to or from their time-share in Vermont.

The party itself was held at the church, just down the road from my Uncle David's house. There was tons of food, lots of old pictures of Dave & Alice and the family, and of course there was lots of family too, which is what makes these things fun. Or agony. Or something in between.

The agony comes in the shape of old photographs. Anyone who knows me knows that I do not like having my picture taken - never have - and so there aren't a ton of pictures of me around. At least I don't think there are. Nice people don't pull them out. But - yep - you guessed it. David, who until this past weekend has always been my favorite Uncle (OK, he's still my favorite), managed to pull out an awful picture of me from the late 70's or early 80's. My glasses are the size of coffee mugs - not thick like Coke bottles, but HUGE in circumference. I can't imagine ever wearing anything like that, but apparently that was what was available at the time, and considered stylish. At one point. By someone.

Not by my cousin Gary; he informed me that he thought they 'might have been in style, for about three weeks, the month before I bought them.' We had some fun with the picture, and the giant glasses; in fact, we tried to find similar pairs on other people in the retrospective DVD that played in a corner of the room, or on people who were at the party, since everything old is new again...

The DVD presented another moment, one that in hindsight I should have been prepared for, but wasn't. While several of my generation were watching it and chatting, there was a close shot of my aunt & uncle, and then it pulled back a little and Mom was standing to the left, and it pulled back a little more and Dad was standing on the right. I don't know if I expected there not to be any pictures of him, or if it's because it was Father's Day weekend. All I know is, boy did it take me by surprise. Happy surprise, but two years later, even the happy surprises are still tinged with sadness.

It was fun to see my cousins. As with many families, I think, we tend to be an 'event-driven' gang. Weddings, graduations, anniversaries, and funerals are the reasons why we get together, but we always manage to find ways to pick up conversations again, even if it's been years since we last talked. It was also particularly good for Mom and Aunt Betty to be together with David, and with one of their childhood friends who came down for the party. Mom, who'll be 79 next month, Betty, who's 83, and David, who's 70 or 71, don't get to spend enough time together. After the party ended, the three of them went wandering off around town looking for the old farm and other points of interest from their past.

So. The more things change, the more they stay the same? When it comes to family, I think that is the case. We're still the same people we were when we were younger, all of us. Lives are different, don't get me wrong - but we're the same people. My uncle still loves me -- after all, he did give me the glasses picture, so at least I can control when it gets shown (never) and to whom (no one). He and Alice have been married for fifty years, and have renewed their vows in advance of the next fifty. My cousins are maybe married, and maybe divorced; they may have kids who are growing up and establishing themselves in their own right. Those of us that were irreverent as youngsters are still very much so; our familial sarcasm is at our beck and call just as it was some 40 years ago. And collectively, we clean a mean kitchen! Time apart doesn't really change things for us.

Those glasses, well, that was one thing that changed for the better!

Sue