Day 3: Reunion 1: Boggs

Monday started without Sunday ending. But that was last post. Monday was the Boggs reunion, Judy’s mom’s family. There’s an interesting dynamic with this trip: Judy’s Grandfather was a southern, country boy, born and raised in Bibb county, Alabama. From what I gather, after high school, he got together with a couple of his friends and they headed up north to Chicago.

The census records and stories I’ve heard have him working as an usher or a steward on a train. While there, they decided to go deer hunting in Wisconsin. As luck would have it, they got confused and misspelled what they were hunting—the three of them met and married sisters. The one that most concerns this story Alma. She married Louie and the two of them returned to Alabama, where they started a family and Louie graduated from Auburn University. They built a home in Pondville and a generation later, Judy was born.

The reunion: greeting, hugging, talking, laughing, eating, talking, walking in the humid parking lot, sitting for pictures, running, kicking, catching throwing, laughing, competing, evading a touch, talking, hugging, farewells. That’s how reunions go, and this one was the same with different people. But it’s not what you do that matters. Although I’m not directly related to any of them, it was nice to see them again.

I’m starting to suspect that the real purpose for reunions is to see how much everyone ages. It’s been five years since the last reunion and all of the early teenagers are now high school graduates. Living with Lia, we witnessed the changes on a daily basis, but these others have been frozen in time for five years. And I’ve been looking at pictures repeatedly for the last five years as I’ve been organizing them. These kids haven’t been changing in all this time, and suddenly they’re a foot taller and preparing for college. And if there parents are any indication of how I’ve been aging? . . . hmmmm. Anyway, we have another reunion on Saturday.