by Valerie Zwald

Created on: March 08, 2007   Last Updated: March 30, 2011

Family

The very word evokes such images - emotional, flash memories of sights, sounds..... There may not be another word so pregnant with meaning, with intense joy and depth of sorrow.

For me, the image that is conjured is complete, a full 360-degree virtual reality movie in my head, complete with Smell-O-Rama, Tactile Replication, and a shot of pure, uncut nostalgia....just to make things interesting.

I am four years old, seated at the farm table in my grandmother's dining room. The table, in my estimation, is as vast as any occupied by the royalty of old. Wood, solid and heavy, it had a palpable presence. On holidays it would hold not only the ceramic bowls, glass relish plates, and cast-iron casserole dishes that housed our blessed food stuffs, but it would also host US - my family, the important players in my world. This particular memory is not that of a holiday, nor any day in particular. It is late afternoon, and a golden sun is illuminating the dining room window, which is topped with a yellow gingham valance hand-sewn by my grandmother. I am seated at the table, alone, waiting for the adults to join me. I can hear my mother and grandmother chatting in the adjoining kitchen, their voices lilting and dancing around one another, always talking at the same time, and yet somehow both women followed the stream of conversation without missing a beat.

I listened without listening, glancing around the room which was adorned with peeling floral wallpaper, pale and yellowing, and scratched wooden floors topped with worn cloth rugs. Black and white photos of my grandparents in an earlier time hung in metal frames painted to look gold. There were other photos, too, snapshots too blurry to make out from this distance, my uncle Dan's graduation photo, and a few wallets of we grandchildren tucked inside the edges of larger frames. Also, above the head of the table where my grandfather sat, hung a horse shoe, upright so as to not let the luck run out. This was a nod to his rodeo-riding cowboy ways, and his superstitious heart. He believed in luck and fate so of course I did too.

On this sunny afternoon, I knew my grandpa and dad were outside in the driveway, probably messing around with cars and drinking beer. That was all I had ever seen them do, so I figured it was the "thing" they did all the time. Messing with cars, drinking beer. Man work. My uncle Dan, one of my favoritist people in the world, was in the living room watching television. I can hear the static

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