Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, December 26, 1993 TAG: 9312230241
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ELIZABETH OBENSHAIN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Each year at these gatherings as I look around my grandfather's parlor, I find myself trying to freeze time, to capture forever the colorful and sometimes eccentric personalities who have been a fixture in my life since childhood.
Here at my 46th Christmas gathering there is that feeling of continuity and security that comes when you're yet again relegated to the children's table by the aunts, uncles, cousins and a father in their 80s who still preside over these gatherings.
They are the people who have taught me how to live, what to value - including the importance of family.
At festive gatherings such as these - but even more in tough and lonely times - just being a part of this cohesive, affectionate family somehow has helped me retain my balance and sense of identity.
The big parlor where we'll gather still shimmers with the childhood memories of the perfect Christmas tree, cut and hauled in off the farm by my redoubtable Aunt Lucy and spun with enough lights and silver tinsel to make it a child's dream.
The huge fireplace will again be blazing with logs, although the line of aunts who used to stand in front of it, discreetly hiking their skirts a smidgen in the back to warm their legs, has thinned from seven to just three.
But in their places are great-grandchildren - the next cycle already filling the old home with racing steps and shy charm.
This year my husband will also have his baptism into the family Christmas gathering.
It's quite an endurance test to face 40 relatives - all bound by their common bonds of blood, of summer vacations and winter holidays spent on the family farm.
He surmounted the biggest hurdle last year - the first meeting with "the aunts." My father's six sisters plus a cousin so close she counts as a sister have always been the gatekeepers into the family. The first introduction, even though the seven are now down to three, is a time of some breathholding. Age has not necessarily mellowed this redoubtable group.
Will Aunt Annie, with the serene face and beautiful halo of white hair, cut him off at the knees with some devastatingly frank comment? You never know.
It was a relief on that first interview to come back into the parlor and find Aunt Annie loading his lap with volumes of family records, old account books from the long-gone country store and other priceless relics of family memorabilia. He had passed the entrance test.
So these gatherings are a time for measuring change - for seeing the new faces that have joined the family from birth or marriage during the past year.
But there is also a kind of eternity here. There are faces that we'll miss this year. My mother; Aunt Millie, whose elegance always belied her hard duty as a front-line nurse in World War II; and Aunt Lucy, a salt-of-the-earth woman who ran the farm and my grandfather's home. They will be missing as we laugh and catch up on family news in the big room before the fire. But in this family gathering, they have left threads of their lives behind in us and in our traditions that will weave into the next generation.
by CNB