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This is a historic "First." We had all gathered in Michigan for Milly's daughter (my niece's) Gwen's wedding in June of 1997. I was enroute to the Pacific Northwest to explore the Olympic Rainforest and to climb Mount Rainier. Martheen was getting a new house remodeled in their retirement move back from Chicago to Northeast Grand Rapids, before leaving for Red Deer, Alberta for a lengthy assignment. Shirley was eager to go to McBain Michigan to visit her very new grand daughter and her daughter Amy, 100 miles north. Let's go!
"Isn't it good to be back together as a family of four kids on an outing again?" asked Martheen, as I drove Milly's new car north up the middle of beautiful Michigan on Route 131. "Well, yes, but, can you ever recall us having done this before?" "Actually, not." With the older two sisters separated by eight to ten years from the younger two sibs, there would have been no time in the growing up period that such a "four sib" outing could have taken place, since a pair would either be too young, or the elder would have jobs or incompatible school, or families had already split up, each busily climbing some different ladder in differing places and certainly on a far different schedule.
So, off we went to visit one of the four of us's grandchild, when each of us had or soon would have new grandchildren of our own, our last rendezvous having been at father's funeral, while thinking our own thoughts about what Dad would have thought if he could have seen and known about us now. Life does not hand us too many contemplative moments as "nodes" along the chain of this happy sort; one must go out and make them happen and seize them in the good times. The "only time we ever se you-all is at weddings and funerals" is a common complaint among extended families. My own is now so extended geographically (not a problem not easily overcome with a little effort) that even the weddings are not always likely to rendezvous all of us. There is one rendezvous left that is inevitable, and perhaps we should seek out a few of the sort depicted here before the one unsought.
Yes, you have taken a tour of my family on these pages, now, but you may have to stay tuned and get updated since it is a dynamic one in which changes can occur, whether or not expected!
But you can see I am proud of my origins, and even prouder of my progeny, which now extend a third generation from me. I, too my boyish surprise, have just discovered that I am the senior generation now! I hope I may be able to yet enjoy a great part of this wonderful world and share it with them, as I have with my immediate family, now on their own course to chart their own worlds. Of all the wonders I have experienced, among the more wonderful is looking now through my sons and grandson at the further wonders still to come!