Last Sunday K’s family had a reunion in a park to the west of the Twin Cities. We occupied an open shed, and before the food, we prayed and sang, and after the food we chatted. It was a pleasantly informal gathering and had the feel of people who don’t see each other very often getting better acquainted.
I’ve been around K’s family for decades but am not part of it, so no one knows quite what to do with me, and, I must admit, the converse is equally true. But lots of smiles and chatter about ancestors made it all quite tolerable.
Now I can confess that the part of the day which made me truly glad was the hour and some drive away from the city and through countryside, which when I traversed it on occasion as a child, was rural. Nothing but farm houses, fields, silos and the usual accoutrements of the agricultural trade.
That was several decades ago, and the intrusion of national enterprises, from gas stations to restaurant chains to big box retailers, has changed all that.
Even so, there are stretches where one sees nothing but corn and soybeans, growing quickly towards the harvest, and behind the fields or next to the road were family farms, one after another. Occasionally, there would be an informal sign about the “Fresh Corn” for sale, and one could see members of the family gathered around a table under a shade tree, drinking coffee and chatting, while they waited for customers to stop by.
The day was pleasant, full to the brim with sun and blue sky, and the hum of the car lulled me so that I felt I was floating along, in a time not quite the past and not the present either, and that my trip had some meaning beyond a drive to and from a family reunion.
I do not know what great significance there might be in several members of a family, sitting around a table drinking coffee, eating home baked muffins, and talking to each other, whether they are at a reunion or just waiting for somebody to buy a dozen ears of corn.
In a world of frequently fetid monologues, demagogues, and spinning of the truth, a family conversation may be both rare and undervalued, as much for what is not said as what is.
And in the silence between the words, one can be struck by the sounds of the wind through the trees, songs of the birds, and even the sound of the traveler in the car passing by, headed for a conversation down the road.
No radio, no tv, no game boy, no cell phone, no PDA…what could be better on a fine clear August morning than the songs sung by families along the open road?
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