2005-08-01 - 1:31 p.m.
The most important part of going to Lily Dale was meeting N.�s family. I was pretty nervous about it, feeling I had to be always �on� and charming to gain their approval. N. said I shouldn�t worry; just compliment her mother�s art and I�d be fine.
It was a reunion mostly of close family. But between mom, her sisters, their children, their children, Grandma, and various friends and neighbors who came by for a bit, there were several dozen people there. (My own experience with family reunions is the gathering every five years of all the descendants of my great-great-grandfather, hundreds of people to whom I only have a minimal genetic link by now.)
With so many people in the house there was almost no privacy. Like when you get up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, there�s someone already waiting for it who wants to chat with you. So I don�t think I had my guard up for all that time. It�s hard to be carefully polite when you have to navigate your way across the living room holding on to furniture to take a leak at 8AM and a dozen people are like �Oh, good morning Geoff!� But I think even the raw me came across well.
Everyone was really cool. One night we went to karaoke night at a nearby townie bar. N.�s sister sang �All That Jazz� with a lot of style and a Dixie Chicks song that she hadn�t even requested. Her acupuncturist cousin did several songs and her cousin who owns a sex-toy shop sang Bob Marley�s �No Woman, No Cry� real mellow. N. herself did �Nasty Girl� and did the bump-and-grind in an unnecessary way which was a little alarming, but took a lot of guts (and liquor).
And they�re all more American than I ever conceived of. We had tuna salad on wheat with potato chips for lunch. We went out to Denny�s. Making dinner was a communal effort, not just passed off to �the womenfolk� as it often is in Italian or Jewish households. One night in a drunken hunger, I asked what there was in the fridge. N. said there was bratwurst with cheddar filling. I had to admit that I didn�t feel American enough to eat that.
I don�t mean this is a function of �whiteness�. N.�s uncle is Japanese-American and her cousins are half Japanese (and their kids are a quarter Japanese, although they actually look more Asian for some reason). N. herself is one eighth African-American and one eighth Native American. It�s just the heartland factor. These folks are from a small town in far western Pennsylvania. I mean, I think most of them voted Democratic, but that sure is a red state.
I wonder if I�ve assumed some sort of mythic-heroic stature to N.�s half-sister and -brother. She screamed out something rather explicit in a drunken moment of passion. When I suggested maybe we shouldn�t tell the world, N. got up to knock on the wall and proudly announce it. Her siblings came into our room a few minutes later and we trembled naked under the covers while they repeatedly chanted what she�d said. This reminded me that, although they�re now 22 and 21, the joy of pestering your 10-year older sister never really diminishes. As N. pointed out, at least she wasn�t whining �is it in yet?�
I didn�t really get to spend much time with them individually. N.�s stepfather is quite the astute businessman (having taken Dad�s Dog Food from basically a garage operation to a multi-million dollar regional power player), but was only there for a bit and I slept through the early-morning fishing excursion. I wanted to learn more about why Grandma is called �Dirty� Grandma (some guy she once met in Florida, as I dimly understand), but I didn�t get to talk to her much either. And I wanted to understand how N.�s Japanese uncle got from his native Hawaii to marry her aunt in deepest America.
I even thought of things to say about her mom�s artwork. She makes paintings with a lot of text, which I thought was pretty cool. Some of them are multimedia pieces with a lot of found objects stuck on, almost like sculpture. One piece I particularly liked reminded me a bit of Joseph Cornell�s shadowboxes. But I didn�t get a chance to say this stuff. Maybe next time.
� 2005 Geoff Gladstone
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