"Climbing Like a Homesick Angel"

Yesterday, I flew back to Chicago. Airports definitely make for good people watching, and my flight was especially interesting with an old man sitting catty-corner from me who talked non-stop. He had a strong Illinois accent, and his enormous bushy eyebrows flared upward at the ends as though trying to fly off his forehead, which I thought was appropriate considering he said that he was a pilot. As our plane took off, he commented to a stewardess, "We have a phrase for this, 'Climbing like a homesick angel,' and this bird does that." I thought it was an interesting saying.

I sat next to a girl who was training to work on an airline. She had a panda blanket, and we chatted about our younger sisters and the holiday movies we wanted to see. (We also shared each other's frightened expressions whenever the small plane hit turbulence and dipped suddenly.) I don't get why some people never bother to strike up a conversation with the person sitting beside them on planes or trains—I suppose I don't get it for the same reason I'll never understand why people (at UChicago) don't always return smiles in passing. Does it really take so much effort to be friendly? What on earth makes people avert their glances in response to a simple smile? I've made it my little project while I'm here to inject my Southern gentility into the student body. Smiles on the quads today, fried green tomatoes in the dining halls tomorrow! (Or perhaps just wishful thinking on my part...)

Overheard in the Churchyard (Family Reunion, Part III)

-Mama, taking in her surroundings: "Anna, all these people are your relatives. I suggest you marry outside of Virginia."
-Butch, a relative by marriage and truly lovable character who lives in his family's old plantation home and refers to Natural Light as "the poor man's Budweiser": "So, Chicago, eh? Couldn't you find a school any closer? Let me tell you, I went to Chicago twice in my life. Both times was a mistake."
-Man serving my vegetarian cousins from Chicago and me dinner, in a shocked tone: "No chicken? Just coleslaw, potatoes, and rolls?"
-Aunt Cindy, fan of exaggeration and sinner for bringing booze in her trunk to the Methodist parking lot: "You watch out for them Spiers who crashed the party. There's some incest there, and I'm not just talkin' cousins marrying cousins...I'm talkin' the real deal."
-A relative surveying the gravestones: "Well, Spiers married Crawford, Crawford married Spiers, and then Spiers married Spiers!"

Perhaps I should elaborate on the Spiers, a branch of the family from my great grandmother's side, but a picture's worth a thousand words, so here goes:

The Spiers Folks

I found amongst the photos a "Robert E. Lee Spiers," but in the cemetery, I saw that his grave read, "Robert Emmett Spiers," so I will pretend that the caption was someone's idea of a joke and leave it at that.

In the Spiers's defense, I met a wonderful elderly Spiers lady who lives in Kentucky, Mama's home state, who years ago visited my parents when she heard that they had come to be with Mama's father in the hospital. I'd heard of this relative long before from a story my parents love to tell, about how, for some reason, my dad was confused and thought that the visiting cousin was my mother's, not his, so when Mary mentioned the name, "Spiers," Dad turned white as a sheet, thinking he'd married a Spiers, one of his distant cousins! It was great to finally put a face
to the story—Mary was a sweet woman.

While I enjoyed visiting with my first cousins (most live in other parts of Virginia, some in Chicago), making connections about the numerous cousins and branches of the family, listening to the thick New York accents of relatives from Queens, and hearing people share old stories, it was sad to think that the exact same group of people would never be together in one place again. One elderly relative, Merryl, who had come all the way from Texas to be there in that tiny church in rural Southern Virginia was delighted to meet my sisters and me, and it made me tear up a bit when she waved goodbye to know that I will probably never cross paths with her, Mary, or maybe even Bill and Carolyn again. I feel like I will never know as much as some relatives do about my family history (perhaps an anthropological project for me can be an oral history of my family?). Still, I cherish the reunion for bringing me closer to everyone, if only for that one evening.