From my "Reveries":
I remember my grandmother's house in a small, lakeside village about 90 miles north of where I grew up. Her modest, two-story bungalow sat on a deep lot that backed up to open fields where doves cooed as I awoke on sunny, summer mornings to the smell of bacon frying. My favorite room was the kitchen, with its massive wood-fired range and huge, round, oak table, around which my grandmother, parents, and various aunts and uncles would sit after a meal, retelling and embellishing tales from the past.
I remember them all as if it were yesterday, even though they are long gone. There was my beloved Grandma, of course, the matriarch and mother of ten, seven sons and three daughters. (She survived Grandpa, who was buried on the day of my birth, by 36 years.) One of the daughters served in the WAC during World War II; six of the sons also saw active duty during the war (the seventh had servied before the war).
A few of the children were absent from our holiday gatherings because of family obligations and distance. Aunt Isabelle had her own brood of nine to care for; Aunt Helen, who didn’t wed until age 36, had seven step-children under her roof; Uncle Charles had departed for the sunny South soon after war’s end. Uncle Louis was missing because at the age of 40 he was killed in a road accident while on active duty in the Coast Guard.
Of the more-or-less regular holiday visitors there was Uncle Joe, the eldest son and another career Coast Guardsman, who among family would unbend from his Chief Petty Officer's demeanor; Uncle Lawrence, the joker and story-teller; Uncle Chet, another raconteur (and the handsomest of a handsome lot); Uncle George, quieter than Lawrence and Chet, but good with the quip; and the "baby" (born when Grandma was 42) -- Uncle Fred, taciturn to a fault and a bachelor until he was 42. My father (Pop), who rounded out the adult male contingent, was closer to his brothers-in-law than he was to his many half-siblings.
The women, in addition to Grandma: my mother (Mom) the eighth child and youngest of the three girls; Uncle Joe's Mary, a flapper in her day; Uncle Lawrence's Christine, the scold; Uncle Chet's Mary, the jolly one; and Uncle George's Peg, a schoolteacher who knew how to let her hair down -- just enough.
Starting with Uncle Louis, all but Mom left this earth in the years spanning 1947 to 2004, with Grandma and Aunt Isabelle making it to the age of 96. Mom held out until 2015, when she succumbed seven months short of her 100th birthday.
Here’s to the departed:
Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom and Charley,
The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter?
All, all, are sleeping on the hill.
One passed in a fever,
One was burned in a mine,
One was killed in a brawl,
One died in a jail,
One fell from a bridge toiling for children and wife --
All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.From The Hill, by Edgar Lee Masters (1869-1930)
* * *
Time, you old gipsy man,
Will you not stay,
Put up your caravan
Just for one day?....
Last week in Babylon,
Last night in Rome,
Morning and in the crush
Under Paul's dome;
Under Paul's dial
You tighten your rein --
Only a moment, and off once again;
Off to some city
Now blind in the womb,
Off to another
Ere that's in the tomb.From Time, You Old Gipsy Man, by Ralph Hodgson (1871-1962)