random thoughts – Day 1,251 – (Sunday) – family day

It was another sunny Sunday, much welcomed after the mostly wet summer. It was also the day of the annual family cookout at my paternal Aunt’s house, which I look forward to each summer. Multiple canopies had been strategically set in the yard, providing ample shade and comfortable places to sit and chat. 

For several years when I was young, Dad’s family had a big cookout each year around Independence Day, but somewhere along the line, either the cookouts stopped happening, or we stopped attending. I was a tween or maybe an early teen, so I don’t know what happened. I went to my maternal grandmother’s or wherever my parents said we were going until the summer I turned 15 when I got a job, which was used as an excuse to avoid doing many things. (This habit has continued well onto adulthood.)

Primrose.

In any event, in the years since returning from Tennessee, it’s been fun attending the family cookout and spending time with relatives I wish I knew better when we were all  younger. We all lived in different towns and attended different schools, so it wasn’t like my many cousins and I could run into each other or meet up to hang around together after school. Logistics were involved, like parents and schedules and transportation.

Once again, this year's family potluck resulted in a magnificent abundance of food. There were grilled things, salad things, pickled things, salty, savory, and sweet things. I ate until it hurt and still hadn’t sampled everything. I failed to take any decent photos, but a couple cousins were on the case. 

After an afternoon that flew by, it was suddenly time to return to The BungaLowell where the house is overly quiet, the primrose is flowering, and the yard still smells of freshly cut grass from Saturday’s mow.