A Family Meal
I felt different—special—dressed in my cousin’s red and white sun-suit. Just an hour earlier, I was in my own mismatched hand-me-downs playing with my sister and cousins before my aunt started shooing us to the bath.
“Bathe. . . here, wear this. . . hurry-hurry-hurry--we have to be on our way.”
This wasn’t the usual course of events—this interruption of a routine summer day. We usually kept busy pumping the pedals of the player piano, swimming in Mr. Harvey’s pool next door, finger painting, and watching Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. Full of activity as they were, those days seemed to last forever as we waited for our mom to pick us up at my aunt’s three-bedroom home on Starbuck Street in Whittier. Efficient as always, Aunt Margaret had us ready, herding us into the station wagon. Soon, we were at the parsonage of the Huntington Park Free Will Baptist church for dinner with Grandma, Grandpa, and the rest of the family. Get-togethers like these were common enough for weekends and holidays. This was definitely not the norm, but for a chance to see my other aunts and uncles and play with my cousins? To get a patented Grandpa Hug that squeezed the breath out of you in the best possible way? To have Uncle L.T. swing us around and joke with us? I wasn’t about to question the why. I was going to seize the day!
At this usual-but-not gathering, the wooden picnic table, made smooth by years of people dining at it, was covered with our traditional dishes: fried chicken, crunchy, greasy and salty; corn-on-the-cob, crispy and buttery; and brown-n-serve rolls. I am sure there were other dishes there like macaroni salad and fried okra. However, my unsophisticated palette only watered for the corn, chicken, and rolls. The hand-crank ice cream maker sat out on the grass waiting for the grandkids to take turns sitting on it, freezing our little behinds off, while Grandpa or one of the bigger kids cranked it, so the ice, cold and salty, could fulfill its purpose of turning milk and sugar into vanilla ice cream.
My cousins and I ran around and played, laughing and talking. The adults split their time between setting or cleaning up the table, keeping an eye on the kids, and laughing and joking in that way adult siblings do as they relive the antics of yesteryear. An opportunity presented itself. Quick! I said to myself. No one is on the swing! Hurry before someone else gets to it. The tire swing was hung by a thick rope that rasped as the swing moved. My little arms reached over the top of the tire, gripping to hold on. My legs were just long enough to push myself without help. The black rubber tire was cool and smooth to the touch, except for the patterned crevices that had allowed it to grip the road once upon a time. Eventually, it’s time to go home, this time in my mom’s 1972 Ford Maverick, featuring three-on-a-tree manual transmission, pale blue paint, and no air-conditioning. We are tired and quiet as my mom drives the Maverick home. We get out of the car and get ready for bed. The next day, we would go back to the regular summer routine.
Years and years later, going through my mom’s picture box, I find a picture taken that day of my mom, her siblings and my grandparents. All of them dressed in shades of red, white and blue and me on that tire swing in the background in what might now be called a photobomb. We were—and are--a laughing, smiling family, and their faces reflect that as the Kodak Instamatic 20 clicked. Memories of that day come flooding back of an unexpected and joyful time with family. Someone, I don’t remember who, told why we had that mid-week gathering. My Uncle L.T., 18 years old, was leaving for Vietnam. We were having one last family meal together before he went. We were saying goodbye.
Anytime I look at this picture now, I see more than my six-year-old self’s memory of that day. There is a then-future-now-past filter laid over the photo. My grandmother’s anxiety for her baby boy. The concern of my aunts and uncle for their baby brother. I understand now why we gathered on a weekday and didn’t wait for a weekend. I understand now that we wouldn’t see Uncle L.T. again for over a year. I understand now how fortunate we were to see him again. So many families didn’t get that.
I am glad I didn’t understand that then.
