Haul Out the Holly: Holidays stir memories, gratitude — and late-night family mysteries

Here we go again already. Thanksgiving. Turkey Day. Christmas hot on its heels. New Year’s and all its promises. Snowbirds flying the coop while the rest of us settle in for whatever Mother Nature and Father Time have in store for us. Four or five months of cold, dark, dreary…

Okay girl, snap out of it! It’s time for gratefulness. Family. Friends. Warmth of hearth and home. Aromas of good things coming from the kitchen. Laughter from all ages, from the youngest of children through old Grumpa who secretly enjoys his family, despite his gruff exterior.

As we gather around the table laden with our traditional favorite dishes, we give thanks for all the good things that came our way this past year. We remember those who have experienced illness and loss, and we recall family members long gone but still in our hearts.

Some of those people came to mind in the middle of the night recently. Old aunts and uncles and grandparents long gone. I tried desperately to remember the name of one of my dad’s cousin’s wife. Don’t ask me why, but it led me to make a list of those cousins. I am not into genealogy or I would already have all those names in front of me. The best I could do was to go to my mother’s old (she’s been gone 11 years) address book and see what I could find.

There is an address and phone number for a cousin from my generation that I intend to reach out to, if her information is still good, and ask her some questions. I’m pretty sure her dad and mine were cousins. She’s the type that will have the whole family tree at hand, ready to fill in the blanks. I would ask my brothers, but I’m afraid I’ll be met with blank stares and shrugging shoulders.

We weren’t a huge clan so there’s not many around to pick the brains of. Uncle Bob had one kid. Aunt Hazel had three but one died as a 12-year-old. That’s it for my immediate cousins on Dad’s side. But he had cousins—Bill, Howard and George—and I think there was a girl who lived on the East Coast and we seldom saw her. I think her name was Ruth. She played the piano and loved to sing, as I recall. Her brother Bill Boehm, a Clevelander, was a talented singer himself, having created the youth chorale, the Singing Angels, way back in the 1950-60s. He sang at Musicarnival and brushed shoulders with Bob Hope. And there’s my claim to fame. I have no idea if he had children of his own. I have no memory of a wife. I think there was one, but she chose not to associate with us country bumpkins.

But there you go. These are the kind of things that stir through my brain and keep me from sleeping.

It was the cousins on my mother’s side of the family that we spent our holidays with through the years. But dear old Dad, bless his heart, tried his best to keep us in touch with his side by making the rounds at Christmas and having the family come to Chippewa once a year in the summer for a bit of a reunion. I was the oldest of the cousins, by a long shot. That is probably why there is such a lack of communication all these years later. I didn’t really know them when we were kids.

Oh my gosh! Aggie! Cousin Howard’s wife. Now I can sleep.