Family...

It comes in all shapes, sizes, and colors... Thank goodness not all as "dashing" as I am...

This past week we attended a mini family reunion (if you can call 40+ attendees mini) in the mountains of Virginia at the Massanutten Resort. Most family members stayed for the extended weekend and some stayed a bit longer. We took advantage of the week long rental and stayed until Friday...

The picture above is of a couple of my cousins, their kids, one of my brothers, his wife and daughter, one of my sons (daughter was in the shower), Mike, his son, and of course me (top of the picture in green). I was not surprised that (being the only gay couple at the reunion) we were accepted totally and unconditionally. I think there may have only been one of (my) aunts and uncles that had any reservations about my relationship, but they kept it to themselves and we all celebrated family without a hitch, as it should be...

Many of the participants had not seen each other in as many as 40 years. Most of the cousins' children had never met any of my (side of the) family. We had people attending from Montana, Massachusetts, Virginia, Florida, North Carolina, and Maryland. A few of the younger cousins were just graduating high school and getting ready to head off to college...

In preparation, I have been working on a family tree using Archives.com. I had traced back this side of the family to 1540, in England. We all are related through the same blood line (our maternal grandfather) so the line was easy to explain. Our family arrived in Massachusetts in 1634 (right after the Mayflower) and we all qualify to be Daughters/Sons of the American revolution. One of our direct ancestors also chartered 5 townships in what is now Vermont (it was still a territory at the time). I had no idea that our roots in America ran so deeply.

While I fretted over the planning of the gathering (since February), and the approval of the locale by my relatives (it was my suggestion), everything just fell into place and the condos we rented, all seven of them, were all clustered together for easy access. In the above photo you can see a breezeway between two of the units. That became the main gathering place with 30 chairs all lined up (it looked like an old folks home)...

I'm sure there will be more references to this outing in future posts...

Over and "Out" from "life back to normal" in Portsmouth, VA USA