The Cousins Gather
For the second time since the pandemic began, my mother's nieces and nephews put together a zoom get-together, this time to celebrate Kelvin's retirement. Not sure why my dad's side of the family is so different; I can barely name more than two or three of his surviving nieces and nephews. We lost track of them after the last of his Baltimore siblings passed away. And, frankly, the same thing would have happened with my mother's were it not for the fortunate fact that so many of them still lived "back home" in rural Virginia and North Carolina. As I tried to chronicle at the beginning of this journal, the country locale made them much easier to find and more fun to visit once we all started approaching middle-age.
The zoom celebration was supposed to be a surprise, but Kelvin soon realized something was up when his wife came home with fresh flowers for their usually empty dining room centerpiece. We got a tour of it during the zoom call. There were eight Brady Bunch style windows on my laptop screen at any given time. Not a bad turnout considering it didn't include my Uncle Junius' children who are pretty nearly all in their eighties and have never made peace with the digital era.
The zoom celebration was supposed to be a surprise, but Kelvin soon realized something was up when his wife came home with fresh flowers for their usually empty dining room centerpiece. We got a tour of it during the zoom call. There were eight Brady Bunch style windows on my laptop screen at any given time. Not a bad turnout considering it didn't include my Uncle Junius' children who are pretty nearly all in their eighties and have never made peace with the digital era.