His passing also meant that we all got to traipse up to Chicago to be with my extended family. Now my family is stark raving mad (most are, I think) and I absolutely adore them. We are, however, terrible about making the time to see one another. So while it certainly wasn't the best of circumstances, I'm always grateful for any opportunity to get the whole crazy bunch together.
My family isn't large by most people's standards, but our nasty habit of only getting together once in a blue moon means there are quite a few fuzzy faces wandering around at weddings and funerals. This was, of course, no exception.
Since we were close to my great-grandfather, we planned to be there for the full six hours of the visitation. We even arrived early to set up the collages of pictures and memories that my mother had lovingly pieced together over the past few days. The first family members to trickle in were ones I knew well: my grandparents, my Aunt Sue with her boyfriend and three girls in tow, my great-aunt Sheri--who is more like a sister than an aunt to my mother in age and rapport. We spent a little time hugging, catching up, and generally enjoying each other's company.
It wasn't until a little later that the hazy and unfamiliar third cousins twice removed began to trickle in. Although I didn't know them well, they all had something comfortably familiar about them: a flash of my great-grandfather's bright blue eyes, glimpses of my my grandmother's delicate, rounded nose, the tall, lanky blondness that is a manifestation of the Dutch blood that runs through all our veins--all a comforting presentation of the familial ties we don't necessarily feel.
As much as I was enjoying the time with my family, I knew that missing two days of school would be difficult. So after dinner, when the conversation had lulled, I retreated back into the kitchen to pull out a stack of plays to grade. Just about everyone had eaten their fill and made their way back out to the main hall. Only a few of my mother's cousins (some of the blurry ones) remained. I gave them a smile, made my way to a table on the other side of the room, and dove into the pile of scenes.
I hadn't made it halfway through the first before I noticed a tiny pair of hands slide their way onto the edge of the table across from me. I looked up to see a little girl with bright blonde hair looking right back.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"I'm grading papers," I responded.
She gave me a shy smile and looked down at her hands. She was about five years old, and I'd never seen her before in my life. We exchanged names and chatted a bit, but we fell right back into silence. Not knowing what else to do and assuming she couldn't possibly have any more interest in what I was doing than I did, I turned back to my work. Those little hands, however, skirted around the corner of the table as she slid into the seat next to me. I looked up again to see her beaming silently at me. I couldn't help but smile.
"I think I have some paper and pens in my bag. Would you like to draw?"
She nodded enthusiastically and squirmed excitedly as I dug into my purse to find the pad of paper and multicolored pens. As she drew, she chattered on about the things she sketched and bombarded me with question after question. Since I found myself far more interested in my new friend than my work and was unable to say no to such a sweet face, I pushed my papers to the other side of the table and joined her. Soon we were joined by another little girl about her age. Her shiny blond curls were pulled into a low pony tail, and she wore a pink t-shirt covered in sequins and glitter. She was considerably more reserved than my new friend, but her smile smile was captivating once coaxed out of her. I pulled out another pen, ripped a page from my notepad, and she, too, began sketching away. Her first drawing was a picture of the three of us standing hand in hand under a big, bright sun. "You're the one with the big feet," she said.
Soon my cousins, brothers and sister joined us, crowding around the tiny little table. Apparently our coloring party was far more interesting than the boring adult drabble out in the main hall. DUH. We all took turns making absolute fools of ourselves for their amusement, and by this time both my new friends (The first, I now know, is my first cousin once removed's girlfriend's little sister. The second is my second cousin.) had lost all inhibition and completely devolved into silly giggle puddles.
We picked up a few more little ones as the night wore on, and my sister dove into her backpack to find more ways to amuse them. After all, my purse only holds so many pens. To their delight she pulled out two tiny tubs of Play-Doh, one green and one blue. The girls sculpted the dough into various animals and shapes before they decided that pounding it into the table was much more fun. At that point my little second cousin turned to my sister and asked her to use a plastic knife to cut the Play-Doh pancake into a heart.
Once the heart was safely back in her hands, she turned to me, handed me the knife, and said, "Now cut it in half!"
My sister, of course, immediately protested. I, however, couldn't say no. I mean, you should see this girl. "Precious" doesn't do her justice. Once I had my laughter in check, I carefully took the gooey heart and sliced it in two, right down the middle. I laid down the two pieces in front of her and carefully handed her the knife. She then proceeded to chop the heart into lots and lots of tiny little squares. My sister objected rather loudly.
"Heeeey! What are you doing that for?"
"Doing what?" she answered with a giggle. The kind that tells you she KNOWS she's cute.
"Chopping up my heart!"
"Becaaaause I liiiike it," she said mischeviously. Terribly pretty and frigidly cold. A heart-breaker in the making, I'm telling you.
"But I gave it to you special!"
"So?"
"I don't think that's very nice."
And then she turned to my sister rather matter-of-factly and unfurled a simple but profound response: "Well, then you shouldn't have given it to me!"
So there you have it. My plays remained ungraded and most of the drawings were snatched up as the girls' parents rounded them up to go home, but I gained some astute words of wisdom from a stinkin' adorable four-year-old girl that day: be careful who you give your heart to, because you never know who's going to chop it into little pieces just for fun. :)
P.S. I have a video. Be on the lookout.
