Quarters and Cousin Drinks
This week has been full of sinus pressure and extra evening events. Frank, the very large puppy, has decided to follow me through the house, only stepping in the exact places I step at the exact time I'm stepping there. Benjamin and Wyatt have started sneaking food off each other's plates and battle-throwing it on the floor instead of eating. This is Lifa's last week of grade 11 before he starts writing exams. THEN IT'S HIS LAST YEAR OF HIGH SCHOOL, AND IS ANYBODY ELSE FREAKING OUT!?!
A day in the life of the Ladds is always full and a little wild. But there's something brewing I haven't given time to that's made all the extras seem extra-extra this week.
Last weekend, my extended family in Texas held their annual family reunion. I followed the planning on Facebook. There were pre-ordered t-shirts and a schedule of events for the kids. My mom's cousins were excited to come together on the porch to swap stories and partake in ever-famous "cousin drinks". Four generations were there with babies on hips, hay rides and all.
The activities and t-shirts change year to year, but the value behind it is obvious. My family loves each other just because they are family. You don't have to do anything, be anybody, or prove anything with them. You just show up, grab yourself a cousin drink and find a spot on the porch. You don't wonder if they want you there. You're family. You belong there.
It's an intrinsic strength I couldn't see until I couldn't be there. I haven't been in a long time. I've lived in South Africa for almost 15 years. In my earliest years on the mission field, I was able to do what "typical missionaries" do and come home to visit once a year. After a few years, however, my South African visas and eligibility to travel went haywire within South Africa's own system. It's a whole complicated story, but the long and short of it is, I have not been to America since 2015.
This week, I poured over pictures of the family reunion and saw the cousins I grew up with, the people I was closest to in the world, with kids I've never met. And they don't know mine. We always thought our generation would be like the one before us, all the cousin's kids would grow up together and the crazy would keep getting crazier. Together, we'd become just as crazy as our crazy great aunts, and it would be our turn to design the t-shirts and rent the karaoke machine.
Instead, I'm looking at pictures and trying to remember who's who, wondering what the kids are like, and what it would be like if mine were there. I'm imagining wild Wyatt running across the wide open field with his cousins and Benjamin terrorizing the bounce house in a Batman suit. I'm re-grieving my grandmother as I stare at her handwriting. My mom sent me a picture from the 2001 time capsule they opened at the reunion. NaNa had saved a quarter from each year of her grandchildren's birth and wrote our names under them for the time capsule. Just seeing my name in her handwriting has brought me to tears every day this week. That same handwriting wrote me a card every holiday we weren't together when I moved away for school.
We had a night off from events last night, and I unloaded my heart with my husband. I told him how my family - crazy, loud, and wild as they are - are the reason I'm me. (If you are a family member reading this and think I might be over-selling the "crazy" part, I'd like to kindly remind you of the year we had mannequin head centerpieces wearing spray-painted cowboys hats. That was also the year of the karaoke machine and a series of events that unfolded from there.)
I've always known God's calling on my life was to strengthen families. However, it's taken all these years and a family of my own to understand what a huge role the family that raised me played in this calling. I always called it "NaNa love", but it is infused in the whole family unit.
I told Chris last night I love our life. I have no regrets. But I also thought our kids would know their cousins. I thought they would know what it feels like to be embarrassed by the collective cackling of their aunts and try to sneak swigs of cousin drinks. I never imagined saying yes to the mission field would cost so much of what made me me. We aren't lonely here and have a wonderful church family. And I still want to be there for cousin drinks and time capsules. I want my kids to have a root system deeper and further than us. We're still working on one of them getting recognized as a person, and the rest of us still don't have travel documents.
It's all still unresolved in my heart. I'm not sure how to wrap this one up except to acknowledge the tension. The reason I'm here is the reason I want to be there. I was loved well so I want to love well. Being away so long has caused us to forge our little family's roots tight and strong in the face of adversity, but I also wish happened a little differently.
I want to thank both mine and Chris' family for loving deep and loving well. I occassionally count the cost of being here, but not a day goes by that I don't think of how much it costs you. You've left a legacy of love, the hard kind of love. Thank you.
