LJ Archive: 09/08/05: Generations

Voices chatter around me, sound waves of generations colliding in midair. My attention wanders from thread to thread, plucking tidbits from the crossfire, digesting them quickly, savoring the color, then moving to the next palaveric hors’d’oeuvre. My eyes would belie my appetite for eavesdropping if but they remained motionless for a moment; fortunately the buffet is huge and there is much to sample.

These banquets have been occurring for decades, holidays and occasions marked on the sacred family stead along the Green River. Loitering about the perimeter, I would otherwise be as much an interloper as the crickets, junebugs and dragonflies – neither native son nor self-made figurehead – and I flitter about distracted by the ambient noise dancing aurally amidst the leaves of the approaching fall, as it was in the leaping spring, and boisterous summer. Again back to the crossfire.

The clan has called this place “home” since they settled in the area over two hundred years ago. Two centuries marked by generations, observed by friends and family both blood and foreign, all yet flesh, gathered under maples and elms. To be uninitiated is to never know this place was here, but there it lies for the taking of a lucky few. It’s something I’m at once honored to be a part of, yet forever isolated from; it could never be truly mine to call on a whim.

Generations.

A cloister of monster pickups and SUVs gives way to smaller trucks, themselves to lumbering station wagons and roughshod postwar automobiles, to the first lurching Model T, to a horse-drawn cart and plow. All bound cautiously down the gravel road along the cliff side, to the cornfield, and into the riverbank clearing below.

Generations.

The younger kids and young at heart glance and marvel at my shiny new laptop; their parents bemusedly shake their heads while their parents reminisce about the old days, oblivious to the intrusion of another technological Pandora. Perhaps but 15 years ago, same parents had a portable TV ogled by my kind, while the not-yet-grandparental remembered when a battery-powered radio was all it took to entertain. It beat luggung the victrola down in the back of the delivery truck. Oh, but we lug the propane grills down now, don’t need that messy charcoal anymore. Gosh, remember the campstoves before then? It was so nice to not chop firewood!

Generations.

The cabin is an attraction now – the rambunctious see it as an anachronism, boomers see their past on a pedestal, and the twinklers see their starts honored and remembered. They all know where the good fishing is though, and the waters of the mistress Green are always swift and cool.

Generations.

Ford vs. Chevy; John Deere vs. Harvester. The latest schoolroom gossip, oh you should have seen how cute the baby was the other day. Those blasted idiots in government still don’t have it right – I could do it better like it was in the old days. When an honest day’s work meant having time for family too. The growing season, fickle as ever. Looks like rain, looks like we need it, remember when it flooded up to the cabin?

Nods and laughter, ribbings and affirmations, garnishments of picnic fare and lazy days. Don’t overcook the burgers again this time, we do it every year!

Every year…

I’m quiet but it’s no linger possible to intrude - Everybody is here in spirit remembered as kindred. I listen and draw comfort, tuck my own seasoning amongst the smorgasboard. Perhaps, long after I’ve ascended the ranks, dismissed the tools of youth and given up my seat at tradition’s table, blood and guest will still gather, and hear the echoes.

Somewhere along the Green River, where the family clan gathers at the place they’ve always called home.

Generations…