Family reunions come in all shapes and sizes.  We’ll be having an unofficial one in a couple of days as most of us gather at Jeanne and David’s for the 4th.  There will probably be about a dozen of us.  Mostly just from Kentucky, but Jamie and her kids will be there from Charlotte.  Over the years, it has become routine for us to use July 4th as the beginning or end of vacation time.

Last weekend we engaged in a more formal “reunion” when Davie, Jim and I took Kenneth with us to Ohio for the Pearson Family annual reunion.  Just another excuse for a road trip.

Waterfall at Monkey Island

We left here on Saturday morning and stopped in Cincinnati for a visit to the zoo.  Their zoo is nice, but our time was limited and the weather was way too hot for hiking anyway.  Davie got tired and went back to the gate to sit in the shade and wait for us.

The Big Cats are my favorites.

Jim, Kenneth and I saw about half the exhibits.  We concentrated on the ones that included shade or air conditioning.   They had a number of “Big Cats” that weren’t really very big inside a big building with glass walls between us and them.  We also went through the reptile house and the indoor bird exhibit.  Many of the animals outdoors were either asleep or hiding in the shade at the back of their enclosures.  They have a Lorikeet cage similar to the one we visited in the Bahamas.  Kenneth got to have beautiful, brightly colored birds perching all over him again.

Heading for a nap after a refreshing dip.

We were disappointed that the Polar Bears were nowhere to be seen. Their enclosure seemed to be empty, but there was no sign to explain.  Perhaps they were simply hiding inside to get away from the heat. We did see black and spectacled bears though.  The black ones were sleeping in the shade.  There was only one spectacled one to be seen and he was swimming when we got there.  At first, all we could see was his head bobbing up and down.  Finally, he came out and wandered over to a shady spot to take a nap.  By this time, I was ready to join him.  Long walks in the 95 degree heat are not my favorite form of exercise.   We found a cafe, bought bottled water and poured it over cups of ice.  I barely resisted the temptation to dump that over my own head.

We spent the night at an older motel in Piqua.  There was no elevator, so we had to drag our bags up to the second floor.  The pool was broken, the snack machine was broken, the sinks were stopped up, and the “Continental Breakfast” consisted of granola bars and coffee.  All the problems were balanced out by the comfortable beds and efficient air conditioning, but we will probably choose a different place next time anyway.

With no real breakfast being offered at the hotel, we ate at Bob Evans then headed to Aunt Jean and Uncle Lowells to follow them to the Park in Springfield for the reunion.  About halfway there, Kenneth asked if we were in the country.  It’s about a far out in the country as you can get without visiting Kansas.

Why do the ducks cross the road? Because Kenneth was feeding them bread.

The strange thing is we wound up at a city park without even a playground.  It is a pretty place with a “crick” running through it and a huge mixed flock of geese, ducks and swans wandering around.  Somehow, no one had remembered to bring paper plates, so we ran over to the nearest store to get some and Kenneth insisted on buying a loaf of bread just to feed the birds.  They finished it off just as the food was ready.

After eating, he and a couple of his 4th or 5th cousins chased each other around under the huge old trees while us “old folks” sat in the shade and visited.  This the only time we see the Ohio relatives.  Aunt Jean is 81 years old and she is the last of my Daddy’s siblings.  About half of my own generation are gone already as well.  Soon, there will be no connections any more because my own children have never been to Ohio and the Ohio branch seldom visits Kentucky.   It’s only been the last few years that we’ve been doing reunions.  I’ve taken some of the grandchildren with me before, like we did with Kenneth this time, but an afternoon isn’t long enough to build a relationship.

Soon after we ate, everyone went their separate ways, getting on with life.  We stopped by the Springfield hospital to see our cousin, Penny, who was having some tests run. She like many other relatives of our generation is beginning to have weight and age related health problems.  I constantly thank God for my good health.  I’ve been generously blessed. I guess some people would say I’m too mean to get sick.

When we left the hospital, Jim decided to play the GPS game for awhile.   We wandered for what seemed like hours down narrow country roads.

Our old Ohio home.

At one point, the road was almost a one lane gravel thing that I was afraid would turn out to be someone’s driveway.  We finally wound up asking directions.  It’s a good thing people there still speak English, otherwise we might still be searching for the way back.  All this was because I wanted to visit Conover and take a photo of the house we lived in when we were kids. We had been by to find it several years ago and, at the time, the people who own it now were in the process of restoring it.  I was curious to see how much they had changed it from what I remember.   I was pleased to find it nearly the same.  The roof over the porch was missing when we lived there and the house was surrounded by trees like the one on the left.  The back yard is now fenced in to protect a swimming pool.  It was a vegetable garden when we were kids.

I was only nine when we left there and came back to Kentucky.  I sometimes wonder how different my life would have been if we had stayed put.   I’m not saying I wish for that.  I have few regrets and cannot imagine giving up my children and grandchildren for any other opportunities I might have missed along the way.

Be sure to visit the gallery for more photos, including my version of the Microsoft XP desktop background.

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My brothers and I were blessed with wonderful parents who loved us and tried their best to raise us to be good people.  Our father was a rather reserved man, not cold or distant, just quiet.  He didn’t have much to say, but when he said something we all knew we’d better listen. 

A professor of mine recently made a scornful comment about adults who still call their fathers Daddy after they are grown.  I don’t know what his relationship with his father was like, but I do know that it never occurred to any of us to call our father anything but Daddy.  We loved him and respected him unreservedly for our whole lives.  I am sixty-six years old as I write this, he’s been gone for more than 25 years, and I still think of him as Daddy.

When my children were born, my greatest wish for them was to have a relationship with their fathers like the one I had with mine.  Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.  I don’t want to give the impression that either of my husbands were not good fathers.  They did their best.  However, they were hampered by the fathers they had to use as their examples.  Somehow, they never achieved that combination of respect and affection that my father earned from us.

My children love their fathers and, as they have gotten older, their relationships with them have seemed to improve somewhat.  But, the unfailing affection and support that I knew as a child becoming an adult, has come from other men.  My brothers who never had children of their own have followed in my father’s footsteps and shown my children and grandchildren the trust and support that we got from our father.

Because they are uncles instead of fathers, they haven’t exerted the discipline that we got from Daddy, but all my children and grandchildren know that they can count on my brothers to be there whenever they are needed, whether it is simply attending their ball games or providing them with a place to live, they have a male figure in their lives that they can count on for support.

That is what fatherhood is truly all about.  Someone posted a Father’s Day quote on Facebook yesterday that says it all: “Any idiot can make a baby, it takes a real man to be father.”

Being a good father is so much more than providing a home and food.  It’s about tossing the ball, listening without lecturing, accepting the child as an individual person with dreams and needs of their own, but still managing to require honesty and reliability from them.  So, to all those true fathers out there, whether they’ve ever actually made a baby or not, Happy Father’s Day. You’ve earned it.

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