To Waxahachie and Back Again
Meg’s grandmother passed away two Saturdays ago. She had been sick for awhile and, to the extent that one can be prepared for the death of a loved one, everyone in the family was ready for the end. We flew back from Oaxaca to join with all the sons and daughters and grandchildren and great-grandchildren in Waxahachie, Texas, where Meg’s dad grew up, and where her grandmother spent nearly all of her life.
At the memorial service, Johnny Pearson delivered a heck of a eulogy, reaching his goal of “not leaving a dry eye in the house.” We spent the rest of the weekend enjoying the rare opportunity to have almost the whole family together (just one great-grandchild short). We ate mountains of good ole Southern cookin', played some touch football, cheered on the Astros, ate some more, told all the classic family tall tales, celebrated Dunagan's 27th birthday, looked through old photos and letters of Grandma's, traded jokes in the kitchen, and kept on eatin'. As hard as we tried, we hardly made a dent in the endless stream of desserts that the neighbors kept bringing over. In the midst of our 10th piece of calf-slobber pie, we gave thanks for Southern hospitality.
It’s said sometimes that, in America, the only times families get together are for weddings and funerals. But Rahul grew up in Jersey with extended family in Kansas and India and attended virtually no big family gatherings, in celebration or in mourning. So spending a weekend amongst a couple dozen of Meg's relatives who had spent enough time together to know each other’s stories and to laugh at one another was an amazing thing to him. Being there made us both hope that as we get older, our families will never be so spread across the world that we can’t come together from time to time and sit in someone’s kitchen together for a few hours.
We’re in Guatemala now. We passed many landslides on the way here, fresh from the last hurricane that passed through, but the roads were pretty good, except for a couple places where 50-foot long stretches of highway had dropped 1000 feet into the valley. Thanks to hastily constructed detours, we were able to keep going.
We fly Monday to a certain forbidden land (more about that tomorrow) but we’ve got one eye on the hurricane predictions and we’re hoping the weather clears for us to be able to get there before Rahul’s 30th birthday on Thursday.
As great as the rest of our travels look, it was hard to leave America this time, saying goodbye again to Meg’s family, hearing the voices of the people we love on the phone, eating bagels and Thai food and Dairy Queen and drinking Shiners on the sofa. We did our best to cushion our return to the developing world by finding a hostel with cable TV so we could watch the Astros reach the World Series on Wednesday (Woooooohooooooo!!) and we’ll be heading to a bar called El Mono Loco (The Crazy Monkey) to watch Game 1 of the World Series tonight in Antigua.
But we miss home, Meg’s dog Abby, drinking water from the faucet, eating fresh fruit without a second thought. Our trip to Texas gave us a little taste of the life that we’ll return to in a couple months, and it looked damn good to us.
At the memorial service, Johnny Pearson delivered a heck of a eulogy, reaching his goal of “not leaving a dry eye in the house.” We spent the rest of the weekend enjoying the rare opportunity to have almost the whole family together (just one great-grandchild short). We ate mountains of good ole Southern cookin', played some touch football, cheered on the Astros, ate some more, told all the classic family tall tales, celebrated Dunagan's 27th birthday, looked through old photos and letters of Grandma's, traded jokes in the kitchen, and kept on eatin'. As hard as we tried, we hardly made a dent in the endless stream of desserts that the neighbors kept bringing over. In the midst of our 10th piece of calf-slobber pie, we gave thanks for Southern hospitality.
It’s said sometimes that, in America, the only times families get together are for weddings and funerals. But Rahul grew up in Jersey with extended family in Kansas and India and attended virtually no big family gatherings, in celebration or in mourning. So spending a weekend amongst a couple dozen of Meg's relatives who had spent enough time together to know each other’s stories and to laugh at one another was an amazing thing to him. Being there made us both hope that as we get older, our families will never be so spread across the world that we can’t come together from time to time and sit in someone’s kitchen together for a few hours.
We’re in Guatemala now. We passed many landslides on the way here, fresh from the last hurricane that passed through, but the roads were pretty good, except for a couple places where 50-foot long stretches of highway had dropped 1000 feet into the valley. Thanks to hastily constructed detours, we were able to keep going.
We fly Monday to a certain forbidden land (more about that tomorrow) but we’ve got one eye on the hurricane predictions and we’re hoping the weather clears for us to be able to get there before Rahul’s 30th birthday on Thursday.
As great as the rest of our travels look, it was hard to leave America this time, saying goodbye again to Meg’s family, hearing the voices of the people we love on the phone, eating bagels and Thai food and Dairy Queen and drinking Shiners on the sofa. We did our best to cushion our return to the developing world by finding a hostel with cable TV so we could watch the Astros reach the World Series on Wednesday (Woooooohooooooo!!) and we’ll be heading to a bar called El Mono Loco (The Crazy Monkey) to watch Game 1 of the World Series tonight in Antigua.
But we miss home, Meg’s dog Abby, drinking water from the faucet, eating fresh fruit without a second thought. Our trip to Texas gave us a little taste of the life that we’ll return to in a couple months, and it looked damn good to us.
posted by Meghul at 4:24 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home