Spitting into Time
since at least 1974
Pulsipher children in 2024, walking down the same waterfall trail my cousins and I walked in 1980
My family’s first reunion was in 1974. I remember it, but I only really remember one thing. It was my sister’s first birthday, and she got presents. The Fisher Price Three Men in a Tub is the one I remember, as in “rub a dub dub.” It had a butcher, a baker, and a candlestick maker. I was envious and wanted presents too. I wonder if my parents would have bought it if they knew the origin of the nursery rhyme, something I found out just now. Apparently it used to be three maids in a tub and was a fourteenth century reference to something akin to a peep show. Maybe the butcher, baker, and candlestick maker were looking at three naked maids in a tub, and that is why they were “knaves, all three!” And also, do we really say “knave” enough? Is four old enough to learn that it isn’t about you anymore?
Is about you, and isn’t about you. Because that is the balance, and at times I have swung too far in either direction. I am back this week from the fiftieth anniversary of that first family reunion. We didn’t call it that, but that’s what it was. Many of them have been at the same place, Snow Mountain Ranch. The first time we went there, I was ten. Forty-four years ago. Both my grandparents and all of my aunts and uncles were all there and all alive. My dad’s parents had seven children. In the picture above, you can just see the back of my Uncle Brent’s yellow jacket. Fifty years after 1974 and Forty-four years after 1980, he is the only one of my dad’s siblings still alive.
Reunions hit at the intersection between family, love and grief. Two grandparents with seven children have a lot of descendants. Well over a hundred, the last time we did the math, which was probably almost twenty years ago. They don’t all still come, now. Many are their own large clans with their own large gatherings. Not all have the time or the financial resources. But children and grandchildren of five of the seven siblings were there.
Mike came to two reunions, or maybe one and a fraction depending on how you look at it. The first was a disaster. That’s a polite way of putting it, but he would have said so himself, did say so, when I got part of my money refunded. I told them at the front desk that I had had a disaster.
“It was me. I was the disaster,” my husband says.
He was, and I very nearly thought we couldn’t get married. He almost wasn’t my husband. But disaster led to him getting the help he needed. Calamity was the catalyst for change. Not only in him, but in me.
His second reunion with my family was not a disaster, but many of my memories are sad. Mike was dying of cancer and in constant pain. He came anyway. Took pictures of me and our children roller-skating. Stayed behind as my children and step-children hiked the waterfall hike with me. I told Sariah and my nieces they could drink the water because I had in 1980. We’re all still alive, so it was probably okay.
But it’s about me and not about me. About family, love, and grief. Being together. About those missing and those who come. From Tennessee, California, Utah, Louisiana, Colorado, and in between moving from Chile to New Zealand. I look at my cousins and can see the children and teenagers we were, in their eyes and in the eyes of our children, who are the children, teenagers, and young adults now that we are (mostly) middle aged. My 6’5” cousin who was once a tiny boy afraid of the goats. My cousin who had cool music taste in 1986 when I hadn’t found KROQ yet and only knew about one sort-of cool band. 1
My daughter was the adorable toddler at the 1993 reunion in St. George. This time, she gives the children tiny skateboards and invites everyone to her wedding. My brother’s daughter is the adorable toddler, now.
Those missing are there and not there, living on in our memories, our genes, and our love.
My family in 1980. I am just to the right of my grandpa, who is in the wheelchair (long brown hair with the barrette).
When my Grandpa Pulsipher was dying and delirious (or at least very out of it), he said
My children spit into time.
What did he mean? We all get to decide, I guess. All of his descendants, including me. But I’d say still coming together for fifty years is pretty good spitting.
Depeche Mode