The Summer of Three Reunions (part two)
The setting!
My husband is the only person I know who came from a family of nine kids! When we were first dating in college, I spent more time trying to memorize all their names and ages than I did on my homework. Info I would need to remember a lot longer than some of my course work.
Everyone was always around for parties, BBQs, celebrations, until they weren’t. From the top down, starting with the parents, the relocations from the Chicago area began early in our marriage. One of Tom’s four sisters remained in the area but everyone else was a plane ride away.
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The nine gathering for a photo in the round!
Events like weddings, graduations and anniversaries could draw a crowd but never everyone at once and the invite list kept getting bigger. Many more names to memorize! Getting all together seemed impossible but so essential. Myriads of details to plan but it finally happened.
For three days last month, in a beautiful setting in rural Washington, most of the family gathered for the fifth tri-annual reunion. An amazing array of doctors, teachers, nurses, entrepreneurs, caregivers, therapists, sales persons, bankers, paleos and vegans and more all celebrating our common bond: family.
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Puzzle almost got finished!
My mother and father-in-law never made it to one of these three-day parties but would have loved seeing the crowd hunched for over the puzzle which never quite got finished, the mob floating down Icicle River in tubes, crazy three- legged races, late into the night card games, babies passed around, cousins becoming friends.
Fun goes fast. In a minute, it was over 
