This Thanksgiving I found myself once again surrounded by my family at Aunt Joanne's house. Twenty-two Agros (and some extended family) sat at three crowded tables sharing salad, picking at turkey, eating mashed potatoes and laughing at stories - some that we've heard a hundred times but never seem get old. As the adults sat down to dessert Aunt Joanne insisted that she was now going to read something to the group. I instantly recognized the stapled papers in her hand as an essay I had written my freshman year of college about the cabin. I told her if it was going to have to be read to everyone and we were going to torture them with my 5 pages of 18 year old drivle to at least let me read it aloud. By the end of the first sentence she stopped me because she didn't like my tone (maybe I was being a bit overdramatic and sarcastic). I apologized and began again...
"It is just a place..." Once I started to read the words more seriously and think about what they meant, the memories of the cabin in Ancram, NY came rushing back. The essay told the story of the beautiful nine acres of woods and the one-room building where my cousins and I spent nearly every weekend of the summer as children. I had written about the fun times the cousins had roasting marshmallows over the fire and how someone always ended up with marshmallow in their hair. I described the Children's Trail my grandfather had made where the grandchildren could play out of sight of the watchful eyes of the grown-ups. I reminisced about the wonderful stories that Aunt Joanne created on the spot to entertain the children and to put us to sleep so that she could join the grown-ups who were playing poker and having fun. Then, I wrote about the devestation I felt when my father and his siblings decided to sell the cabin in the summer of 1996. I wrote about my fears that our family wouldn't be the same without this gathering place. My cousin Patrick and I were furious that our aunts and uncles were ruining the place our grandfather had so lovingly created for his family as he lay in a nursing home in the final stages of Alzheimer's disease. At the time a little part of me was even convinced that it was no coincidence that he passed away just mere days after the sale was finalized...as if he knew that there was no reason left to live. But, as I wrote in my paper, my mother tried to convince me in a heartfelt letter that the cabin was just a place. It was simply a building in the woods and my uncles weren't taking away the memories nor preventing us from making new ones.
This summer will mark twenty years since the cabin was sold and since my grandfather passed away. It was impossible to ignore the squeals of laughter from the great-grandchildren running through Aunt Joanne's house as I read the story. It was almost laughable that I had even thought that our family wouldn't remain close once the cabin was sold! When we ate at the cabin there were only 14 people gathered around the table. If Me-Ma and Pop-Pop, their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren and all sat around the table today there would be twenty-six Agro descendants and their spouses. This Thanksgiving we broke bread with aunts and uncles, siblings and cousins, parents and in-laws and the house was filled with laughter and pure joy.
A lot has changed in the past twenty years. Me-Ma and Pop-Pop are now together in heaven with Uncle Jimmy, who we are sure is playing his bagpipes somewhere up there. The losses still hurt and left empty spaces, but the nine children that have also been born into our family fill our hearts with new joy and fill our yards and homes with new shrieks of laughter. At the Agro Family Reunion held each June it is hysterical to watch the little girls play bocce and gossip together. The boys anxiously await for someone to bring out the water balloons and squirters and chase after the grownups who play along. Twenty years later we can still find my dad and Uncle Joe waving paper plates over the fire and tending to the grill no matter where we are. Aunt Joyce still enjoys her perfect toasted marshmallows. The kids still end up with marshmallow in their hair and they all know Aunt Joanne's story, Six Peas and Six Peas More, originally told thirty years ago. Just last week my cousin Patrick and I marveled at how nicely our daughters played together. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised and should have just expected it. But the two of us were so sure that our family was ruined when the cabin was sold. This past Thanksgiving proved our family was anything but destroyed when that land was passed to a different family. We only keep growing stronger, making new memories and still love to retell stories of our old memories.
Whenever times of big change are ahead (like, say, moving to Finland) I look to my family for support. It's going to be very difficult for me to be away for seven months from all but my very small immediate family. But I also know that when I return we will all pick right back up adding to our collection of stories to tell around future campfires!
