As I’m sure you know from news reports, I had another birthday this weekend. I keep waiting for someone to yell “Walker is in his 70s! This is ridiculous! Aren’t we going to do something about this?”
But no one ever does. It’s almost as if the world doesn’t care.
But aside from that, it was a pretty good weekend. The best birthday I can remember in a long time.
Got a free meal from a family member, who drove a considerable distance to be with me. That’s appreciated.
Also took advantage of a couple freebies in restaurants I frequent, over the week.
I heard that translation work may be coming this week. And even that my car part might come in (!).
Also a couple other items I don’t feel free to share publicly. One of them was that a big mistake I thought I’d made turned out to not be nearly as big as I thought. Made my crowded interior life a touch roomier than it’s been.
Then on Sunday, I drove down to Kenyon for our every-other-year (I can never remember whether the word is “biennial” or “semi-annual”) family reunion. A bittersweet one.
We held it in Depot Park, next to the municipal swimming pool and across the road from the bare spot where the old Root Beer stand used to be. The weather was beautiful, unusually so for the beginning of August in Minnesota.
Attendance was down. Scheduling conflicts, Covid fears. I don’t know what all. Perhaps the main reason is that the old mainstays, “the Cousins,” grandchildren of our immigrant patriarch John Walker, have mostly died off now. It’s become a reunion of second and third cousins. And second and third cousins tend to be less invested in one another than their “cousin” parents.
And, of course, all the families are smaller nowadays.
The word around the picnic tables was that this was likely to be the last Walker reunion ever.
There was a small crisis to handle. Cousin Doris, widow of Cousin Jim, had some family history items she needed to pass on, since she’s moving to an apartment. Among them were a lot of family letters – significance unknown. And my great-grandmother’s wedding dress from 1890. And Great-Aunt Charlotte’s porcelain doll (possibly valuable). Plus four very large photographic portraits, of my great-grandparents and of their individual parents, in couple shots, dating back to the mid-19th Century.
I took it all, except for the doll (fear not; it found a home). I have no place to display the photos, but I’m the family historian, so they go to me. In my basement for now.
I find it poignant and sort of metaphorical that our family heirlooms, such as they are, should end up in the home of a childless man. After me, who knows what will become of them?
I need to put labels on them.
