Thursday
Yesterday joy reigned supreme in the Bates household as my eldest son flew down from Washington, D.C. with Alban (age 10) and my youngest son drove up from Georgia with Esmé (10), Etta (8), Eden (6) and Ocean (4). My brother Sam and his wife were already here—chased by the blizzard, they drove down from Madison on Thursday—and we had a zoom reunion with my other two brothers, along with their wives and one niece. As child energy exploded in our house, I felt some of it entering my bloodstream and felt young again.
African American poet Rita Dove, one-time National Poet, has a great poem about family reunions. In her case, it’s a summer barbecue, not a time when temperatures plunge to record lows. But the energy is the same, regardless of the time of year. I identified with her report of how her relatives arrive from all over and instantly launch into animated conversations. Or as she puts it,
hordes of progeny are swirling
and my cousins yakking on
as if they were waist-deep in quicksand
In our case, for the first time we had a kids table, which proved wildly successful. The five grandchildren, who hadn’t seen each other for over a year, bonded instantly and had much more fun than they would have had they been sitting with us.
And then there are Dove’s comments on skin color. When she talks of mixed genetics, I wonder whether she is referring to grim stories of America’s slave past. Some of the coffee color she describes has undoubtedly been the product of white masters. In our case, the mixing is more benign: Toby’s children are Trinidadian American while Darien’s son is Korean-American. The “beautiful geometry of Mendel’s peas” (nothing grim about it in this case) has been at work.
While Dove’s relatives demolish cheese grits and tear into slow-cooked ribs, we did the same with a lamb shoulder, a honey-baked ham, mint chocolate chip ice cream, and Harry and David pears. Like Dove and her relatives, we tacitly agreed this was not an occasion to worry about waistlines. Nothing pinched or hatchety about this gathering.
Here’s the poem:
Family Reunion
By Rita Dove
Thirty seconds into the barbecue,
my Cleveland cousins
have everyone speaking
Southern—broadened vowels
and dropped consonants,
whoops and caws.
It’s more osmosis than magic,
a sliding thrall back to a time
when working the tire factories
meant entire neighborhoods coming
up from Georgia or Tennessee,
accents helplessly intact—
while their children, inflections flattened
to match the field they thought
they were playing on, knew
without asking when it was safe
to roll out a drawl… just asit’s understood “potluck” means
resurrecting the food
we’ve abandoned along the way
for the sake of sleeker thighs.
I look over the yard to the porch
with its battalion of aunts,
the wavering ranks of uncles
at the grill; everywhere else
hordes of progeny are swirling
and my cousins yakking on
as if they were waist-deep in quicksand
but like the books recommend aren’t moving
until someone hauls them free—Who are all these children?
Who had them, and with whom?
Through the general coffee tones
the shamed genetics cut a creamy swath.
Cherokee’s burnt umber transposed
onto generous lips, a glance flares gray
above the crushed nose we label
Anonymous African: It’s all here,
the beautiful geometry of Mendel’s peas
and their grim logic—and though we remain
clearly divided on the merits
of okra, there’s still time
to demolish the cheese grits
and tear into slow-cooked ribs
so tender, we agree they’re worth
the extra pound or two
our menfolk swear will always
bring them home. Pity
the poor soul who lives
a life without butter—
those pinched knees
and tennis shoulders
and hatchety smiles!