The Little Things Part One
April 18, 2022
This weekend I headed out with the family towards West Texas for the second time in just over a month. In March we visited Sweetwater for the 64th Annual Rattlesnake Roundup. This time, we were headed towards Snyder. We attended my husband’s family reunion in Fluvanna.
I’ve told ya’ll before about how West Texas has grown on me. I used to prefer the soft rolling hills, lush trees and humidity of the Piney Woods but there’s just something about that climb up towards the caprock, the brushy mesquite starting to showcase fresh spring leaves as they stretch and reach from their scraggly roots; it all now intrigues me and I see it has a beauty all its’ own.
I’ve also mentioned before my concern about things getting too big, so generic, so homogenous in our society that we lose a lot of the little, special, unique things that are only from a certain area or only within one individual. We’re losing small, precious things in our big, convenient, social media, technologically advancing, politically polarized world. Our screens seem to plaster a seamless wash over all of our God given beauty and uniqueness.
Over the next few weeks, I hope to speak to that with a weekly essay in a series of essays, videos and recipes.
So, what are we losing exactly? Well, every time I travel or camp or spend practically just one split second, being still and listening to God I feel this looming, monumental, behemoth emotion. It’s been very difficult to put it all into words let alone figure out what I’m supposed to do with it. So, I’ve prayed about it for some time.
While we were traveling back home along I-20 from Roscoe, to Sweetwater, eventually Eastward back down Ranger Hill and listening to an audio book about famed Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, it struck me. This is not the type of feeling I should shrug off. This is not the type of feeling that can go away. It is after all, as mentioned in the above paragraph, behemoth. I felt like I needed to do something. As if I’ve received a call to action.
I’ve felt all of that before but on that drive, I realized, it’s a group of problems, worries and fears that cannot be addressed in one sitting or in one subject or one essay. My call to action is actually an outlined set of directions. It's an umbrella feeling for a whole lot of impending loss that I just cannot bear to let go unnoticed. So, I’m going to try to identify some of those precious things we, as a society are about to lose if we don’t wise up, slow down and pay attention.
The first on my list of things to address, because it’s fresh on my mind, is family. More to the point, the personalities, likes and dislikes, loves, losses, struggles and triumphs of the generations that have come before us.
In order to properly express why this is important I’m going to have to switch gears for a moment. Instead of experiencing things on our own terms we get used to things being communicated through certain mediums. We feel happy or experience goodness because we relate to a movie or show or how a book is written. I think by in large it’s human nature.
Don’t get me started on social media, which is a great way to shut down individual thought and emotion and to homogenize an individual into a mass or society. We funnel our thoughts through these presets. We put our emotions and subsequent reactions through certain filters of experience. Sadly, we have a lot of e-experience these days.
I think this has always been true, though. Literature, movies, art all can be great for inspiration. We can use these things to motivate us, help us communicate our feelings but they should always be co-stars in our own individual plays, not cast in the lead role.
In our day, however, it has taken over. We have such limited experience with actual reality we live through things like social media and films. Is it any wonder that these avenues are being used by politicians? We have made things so convenient and so easy.
It’s not reality, mind you. These are good ways to communicate sometimes, to share, but they are not indicative of actual real life; of earth, dirt, air and living within it. They are second hand portrayals of it, a retelling of a story which may or may not include human error or typos.
Precious and pivotal to our expression, as an individual, is the ability to speak our feelings; hope, joy, struggle. It requires this and endurance and to triumph over hardship sometimes to speak this to ourselves and sometimes to others.
In our day, I really think that we feel we must communicate in simile. We Meme, we repost. As a matter of fact, I challenge you to look through your news feed and add up how much of what is posted by friends is actual original thought or is it something they found and shared?
As our ability to communicate as authentic and unique individuals declines, so goes the decline of so many other, important aspects of life.
Our fake world gets bigger and our real, tangible world gets smaller and smaller.
Our physical connection with the food we eat? Gone, for most of us. Do you harvest your own vegetables or butcher your own meat?
Our physical connection with what it took to build the home we live in? Gone. Who built the home you live in?
Hard physical labor required to live our lives? Gone. Mostly. Our perception of God’s Creation and our place in it is getting blurrier and blurrier.
You can see this in how a lot of my generation have tried to get back to making things on their own. From sourdough starter to raising chickens. We all feel this need to get back.
We feel these things because we are losing so much and I truly believe it’s a really good way for Satan to get his word in, to distract us. What better way for the devil to prevail than blinding us to how God made the world and where our place is in it? I mean, after a while you even begin to question if He made it in the first place.
It’s a really slippery slope.
Ok. I know all of that sounds a bit preachy and I’m sorry. Again, it’s been difficult to follow the arrow on this because it’s complex.
So, back to the generations that gave rise to you. And me. Any whoever we are.
We were at this family reunion.
Now, I want my kids to know where they came from and who they’re related to good or bad. I want them to know their people. Not in a prideful way. In a way that tells them they are not only a unique, God crafted INDIVIDUAL HUMAN that is only here on this earth once, but that they are also part of a bigger picture. I think that’s really important.
It’s partly why I got my DNA run through Ancestry.com. It’s why I try to learn about my husband’s family. I really believe before you can be YOU, and use your gifts to their fullest God indented purpose, you need to understand that you’re part of a much bigger picture.
It is because I’ve always felt this way that when we had the opportunity to attend this particular family reunion this weekend that I was all for it.
Now, I know that these things can be awkward for people. To the point, these things are often awkward for me. The line you toe as non-blood-relative-spouse-of-a-last name-passing-grandchild is blurry and often confusing. For example, I had feelings of foolishness showing up. I mean, I’m married into it. These people didn’t know me from Eve. I didn’t really know these people other than finding things out to explain to my kids.
My husband, bless him, has a really hard time with names and my wonderful father in law shouldn’t have to draw me a diagram of the family tree when he’s trying to visit with long-time-no-see cousins. So, I do the best I can and be as friendly as I can and for the most part, people, especially Texans, and dare I say West Texans, are exceptionally hospitable, friendly, and just like me, appreciate good food.
I try to be respectful and friendly even with my confused drawl. Honestly when you put all that together, the food and friendliness, the venue and the date and it’s a party. Regardless of who you are or are not related to. Although, my husband did joke to my oldest son that this was a terrible place to look for girls.
In a conversation with one of my favorite people, one of my husband’s aunts, she mentioned that another family reunion on another side of the family, was likely to never occur again. That saddened me a great deal. It also wasn’t the first time I’d heard someone mention a family reunion that was no more. The more I thought about it the more common it had seemed it was becoming. So, as I was enjoying meeting new faces and hearing bits and pieces about who these people are, my mind was filled with “why”?
Why are family reunions dying out?
Maybe driving to Fluvanna (or your great grandma’s town/fill in the blank) is too much? Once a year. When it happens at the same time every year and you can clearly plan for it….
No. That can’t be it.
It’s a decline in what you see as important. It’s become a small thing. It’s become one of those little things. If we make it little, it’s not a priority. It gets shoved off to the side and the “big things” take precedent. Maybe it’s a vacation or a job or whatever. Bigger things play a role. We get to name the big and little things.
Well, who or what determines how you prioritize? Any why has this become one of the small things on my list of small things we should protect? A small place, rich in value, that is declining and may soon be forgotten?
There is value, lasting value in knowing where you come from. In hearing how your great-great grandmother married and moved to the middle of literally NO WHERE with her husband who was determined to lead his family and forged out a life for themselves and the generations that might come after them. There is real value in trying to understand and respect the investment in YOU that they had.
Conversely, it is also important to know if that wasn’t the situation. Maybe your great so and so didn’t think one millisecond into what he or she left behind in their wake. Maybe you’re the product of their unintentionally or commitment to life long chaos. If we go and listen to the story, knowing that God values us as individuals, imagine what we could learn? After we learn, how could we apply it? What would free us? Inspire us? Motivate us? How would that propel us? Would that change the filter through which we express ourselves and make choices? Yes, in a big or small way it would. It would become a part of our experience.
I attended, as a kid, my own family reunion twice. This particular branch of my family started in rural southeastern Mississippi. This is where my Great-grandparents lived and raised a family chock-full of children. Those children had families eventually and those families had families and so goes time.
I remember being fascinated with this huge group of people, feasting on an amazing potluck lunch, looking around a room at a group of people that all had a variation of my and my siblings’ noses.
I remember people were so happy and engaged. There were clusters of small groups seated at round tables on the edges of the large room of the community center, quietly talking but their expressions were so LOUD I couldn’t ignore them. Then, there were solemn handshakes and hugs that I could tell was shared understanding and hurt over a family member now lost.
I remember anyone aged 10-18 grouped together and being told to “go and play, be friendly, enjoy this time”. I mean, to a preteen and then a teenager during my second attendance this was confusion but I played the game.
At a family reunion there is so much.
I mean, we come together in simplicity. In the name of celebrating the fact that we came from the same lineage we bring food we’re mostly proud to place on a table to share, some more than others. Some ran to the grocery store to grab something to lay down on that buffet table and that speaks so well of them and the gravity, the importance of the occasion. It seems simple. Come if you’re related. Eat. It’s courteous to bring something to share but if you can’t, you’ll be welcomed anyway. Why?
This is a reminder of your place in a big picture. Now, modern thoughts might tell you that this means you are just a cog in a wheel. It might make you think you’re unimportant or you don’t belong.
No. You are a vital part in a story. More importantly, the other people in that community have their own reasons for wanting you there, for hugging your neck, for making you a part of the story.
We are, none of us, an island.
Family reunions and staying in touch with where you came from are so important. Our life in simile blinds us to that.
Unless you go, despite the possible inconveniences, you’d never know the details of your real relative, people actually physically related to you and how that might apply to your situation. That’s real.
That’s now simile. Try and “Meme” that.
Family Reunions are another small thing disappearing from our landscape. I think they’re worth holding on to for a while longer.
Coming UP:
Family Recipe Video
The Next Small Thing: Small Town vs. The Suburban Sprawl Monster
