Martin Family Gathering

Last evening, the Martin clan gathered for a family picnic at my Aunt Dorcas's house in Manheim. The Martin's are my mom's family. She's got four sisters and two brothers (one still living), plus all of their children and grandchildren, which makes for a rather large circle of lawn chairs out in the yard.

It was nice to see everyone, especially Grandma, the recent newlywed, age 87 and as lovely and smart and agile as when she held me on her lap to read to me when I was five. (Although she is still one to nod off pretty quick, just like in the middle of those stories when I was five. "Um, Grandma? Grandma? Excuse me? We were reading?") Grandpa passed away several years ago, and Grandma has kept herself up pretty well over the years - she's just a teeny little thing - so I would imagine the potential suitors started lining up pretty quickly. She married a very kind man named Clarence, and now Grandma Martin (she'll always be Grandma Martin to me) is officially Grandma Stoner. (Which is really quite funny when you think of illegal drug references and my little Mennonite grandma.)

We love to laugh when we all get together, and last night was no exception. We've had our share of pain and loss. (Which, by the way, is how we pronounce Aunt Lois's name, incidentally. Not "Low-iss" which I believe is the normal way. She's "Aunt Loss" to us and always has been. I understand that she likes the family members whose paths cross with hers out in the business world to say it properly. That must be hard to remember.)Yes, we've had pain and loss. In addition to losing Grandpa several years back, my Mom's oldest sister Nancy lost her husband way back in the mid-seventies when her kids, Randy and Leanne, were little. My own Dad died in the mid-eighties when my brother Robin and sister Karen and I were just kids, and Aunt Dorcas's husband Ken, the oldest Martin sibling, died about ten years ago when their daughter Kim was just a girl. This is really only about the half of it...just the deaths part of the pain. But the real point here is that because we've cried together, we can really, really laugh together, too! I think there is a direct correlation.

One of the comedic highlights of the evening came from Aunt Carolyn. Her husband, Uncle Danny, was not in attendance. They have no kids - it's just the two of them, and I think because of this they are very comfortable about doing their own thing. So Uncle Danny was on a hunting trip. "In Iowa," is what she said when the other uncles wanted to know where he went hunting, and what for. "Mule deer?" was her uncertain response. The details got sketchier and sketchier, until Uncle Lynn put two and two together and realized that Uncle Danny was not in Iowa at all, but in Colorado. We all found it quite amusing that Aunt Carolyn really had no clue at all what state her husband was in! Apparently I am keeping my husband on much, much too tight of a leash, because I need to know not only the state he's in, but also the zip code.