I haven’t written for Lillian’s blog in some time: she’s growing up and more and more of her story is hers to tell and not mine; I see her with the eyes of a doting grandfather, and see loveliness and kindness and something close to perfection. That’s a heavy burden to put on anyone, so perhaps best not to write about it everyday!
Yesterday at my brother’s house, we got together with Deborah, one of my two first cousins, the daughter of my dad’s sister, and her family. We had a good representation of cousins — though we missed those who weren’t there.
These days, the cousins of my generation are the eldest of our family. Our parents are all gone. I remembered their voices, and the voices of the old people of my youth, as I watched Julian, Deborah’s grandson, and Lillian, my granddaughter, laugh and play. I wondered if, in fifty or sixty years, they might sit in some living room watching their grandchildren play, and think back to this day, and remember some of the voices in that long chain of people from whom they come.
In January of 1954, sixty-five years ago, Deborah and David, my brother, and I, played in my grandparents’ house out in the country in far western Kentucky. There’s a snapshot of us, and in the background is our great-grandfather, Hardin Graves. He was born in 1876; as he sat there watching us, did he think back to his own childhood and remember the old ones of his youth? Was his childhood as vivid and present in his memory then as mine is in mine today?
I don’t know. But I love to see my children, and my grandchild, and my nieces and my nephews, and my cousins, and to hear their voices, and to hope that the chain of family they represent will continue unbroken into the future.
The Denby Clan 