by Susan D. Anderson

Created on: November 19, 2009   Last Updated: November 23, 2009

The Soul of a Village

Whenever they gather as a family, no matter whose house it is, the Bouchards end up spending time in the kitchen. Like angels dancing on the head of a pin, they always manage to fit a few more around the table and up against the counters, as the number of people in their personal village grows. It's not just the food that pulls young and old into the one room where there's not going to be any place to sit down. Crowding around is a form of intimacy. I've seen how members of this family make frequent eye contact over each other's heads, move fluently in and out of one another's conversations, grin at each other from across the room in a way that penetrates the layers of people.

Thomas Bouchard's 90th birthday party last May was a little different. Over 100 actual and extended family members gathered at his house on that warm spring day, maybe a little relieved to find the feast deliberately spread out in different directions to accommodate the crowd. Outside, one of Thomas's grandsons cooked at the grille while people chatted at long tables set up in the yard. Others loaded their plates from two buffet tables placed against the walls of the garage, and milled around the picnic coolers full of drinks that lined the driveway. Inside, Thomas visited with a steady stream of well wishers.

Annie, second oldest of Thomas and Joan Bouchard's five children, was my good friend in college, and we've kept it going for over 40 years. I have a close relationship with every member of her family, who call me "Aunt Sue" the way Thomas is called "Grampa" by everyone. I have become friends with her best friends from high school, colleagues from her teaching job, and her neighbors. I feel as if I know these people just about as well as I know the meager inhabitants of my own personal village. The Bouchard village has been my constant in a lifetime of change.

One of the constants was missing last May. Joan Bouchard, matriarch of this extended family, wasn't there to celebrate her husband's birthday. She'd landed in the hospital the week before, almost 90 herself and suffering from a heart condition and a kidney condition that were mostly due to the aging process. Otherwise she'd have been up at the crack of dawn, made Thomas's breakfast and cleaned up the kitchen, gone to the survival center where she spent a few hours volunteering every day, dropped in on a member of her church who was in poor health, done a half-dozen errands, and then been in our midst

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