Long Over Due - Both My Blog Post and My Trip to Our Kentucky Family Reunion

Some may have noticed that my blog has not been updated since July 14. Yikes! The good news is just because I have not written DOES NOT mean I have stopped my training walks. Vikki and I left Friday the 21st at 7 am for our trip to Kentucky. And so I do admit that I have not walked in a week. The good news however, is that I was a week ahead of schedule when we left so I am still on track. On track that is once i put in 10 miles today!

Truly long overdue was this trip to the McIntyre family reunion. I had been to Kentucky only once in 1975. I was five years old when my mother and I boarded a train to Ohio and from there drove down with one of her cousins to Kentucky for the McIntyre family reunion. It seemed only fitting that when I returned some 34 years later, I brought my own daughter.

We had a wonderful time which I plan to write a short stoy on in the days to come. Suffice to say for now. It was a remarkable and unforgettable journey.

Since our return however I have felt rather melancholy. It is a sense of finding something you never knew you lost and then wondering how you could have ever lived without it. I am saddened by the years Vikki and I missed bonding with my mother's Uncles and Aunts and multitude of cousins. I am overjoyed to have found them but grieve for those who passed away before I came back to Kentucky.

I hope they did not pass thinking we did not care or worrying what had befallen my grandfather's only daughter? I wonder why my mother did not make it more of a priority to keep going back. I think of a number of reasons, they all seem trite and ridiculous. And I sum it up to a mixture of not enough time or money, too much illness (her own, my father's, my grand mother's) and the avoidance of the great sorrow I am sure the hills of home kindled within her for the loss of her sister and parents and childhood.

As stirring as the country air, as breath taking the mountain views, as delicious the food and endearing the conversation, I felt it too. I feel a sadness for the day's gone by, family who have passed, memories lost as years turn to decades, as decades turn with generations, as generations watch grandchildren become grandparents.

I am comforted by my belief that those passed are the ones who conspired with my mother in those smokey mountain clouds to bring us back home; that they reached down and orchestrated this incredible reunion, exactly when Victoria and I needed it most. At time when we searched for a renewed sense of kinship after my mother passed and left a missing piece in the familial triangle of love that was just the three of us: mother, daughter, grandmother.

Victoria commented how remarkable it was that we immediately felt the bonds of kinship with our lost relatives. That it felt natural and immediate and familiar. I agreed and tried to explain how families pass down with each generation long-held attitudes and beliefs, customs, philosophies and moral codes that live beyond any one person: Ways of speech, sayings, habits, mannerisms, how we show love, what we value, how we measure happiness, what we find precious and endearing, what we embrace and discard.

I believe it was my second cousin Mike who just moments after meeting me at the family house stated adamantly, "She reminds me so much of Jackie!" I immediately thought of the fact that I was adopted, and then I realized he was not referring to my features, but to my expressions, my hand gestures, the way I walked, conversed, laughed--all things my mother taught me and which her mother taught her and so on. I never felt more a part of a family than in that moment.

And I brought this home with me to Texas where I feel more like a McIntyre than ever and homesick for Kentucky like never before.

When i was in Kentucky I met Mott (Martha) my moth's cousin and my great Uncle Bascom's daughter. As I sat in my bosses office after I returned from the trip, I described Mott in great detail. "She is at least 65, I assume and her father's primary caregiver. She appears to have assumed the role of matriarch. Everyone's answer to most questions about McIntyre family history is 'Go ASK MOTT!' or "Mott will be the one to know!' She never seems to sit down, cooks three meals a day, loves her family so much and has the most amazing attitude and disposition." I explain how, based on my limited knowledge of family history, that it appears that most of Mott's life has been dedicated to taking care of her family. "I just adored her!" I added. My boss smiles and asks, "Does she remind you of anyone?"

I could have spent the whole vacation just with Mott. On my next trip I would like to spend a week or maybe two there at the family house. Picking Mott's brain, learning about the rich family history and just soaking her in.

When we left she gave me the Coca Cola bottle opener my grandfather Homer had brought home and placed in the family kitchen back in the 30's I believe. It was a piece of the family and the history and the house and I was moved beyond words.

To top it all off I learned Mott is also a breast cancer survivor. Yet another beloved family member to keep in mind as I put one foot in front of the other on this remarkable journey. I wanted to walk while in Kentucky, but after hearing stories of bears going in houses, listening to Coyotes off in the distance and seeing Foxes in the yard - I opted to take a nap.

I woke up this morning with the country song Red Dirt Road by Brooks & Dunn singing in my head and I heard these words "that summer I turned a corner in my soul, down that red dirt road." Although it's paved now, this is truly something I can say about my return to the McIntyre Home Place.

Today, I hit the flat hot 100 degree Texas sidewalk with memories of the Kentucky hills truly turning in my soul and under my feet.
by Patricia McDonald on Sat, Aug 01, 2009 @ 12:52 PM CT