The fullness of time... family reunions

The hills, shorn on top for hay, wear wreaths of Black Eyed Susans, Saint John’s Wort, Queen Anne’s Lace, pink asters, and blackberry bushes laden with sweet berries. It is summertime, full and flowing over, on the farm. It is the year of the bean in the garden. Squash, usually so dependable, didn’t do well this year but every bean bush is extravagantly loaded with beans. Fireflies sweep through the dusk and early evening bearing witness to the quiet nightfall. Dusk falls a little sooner than it did last month but the sunsets are still gorgeous. Children run and scamper trying to collect enough fireflies in a mason jar to make a lantern just as my cousins and I did years ago at Cloverly. A fire in the chimenea on the deck flickers and lights the faces of family gathered around telling stories. Laughter floats on the breeze as I go to put the horses and donkeys up for the night. It is family reunion time at Sabbath Rest Farm.
Our reunion time began when our friends from Beijing, China came for a visit with their three daughters. They are staying at Montreat, a Presbyterian conference center near us, and come for a farm fix. Dan, a seminary student when we met, was an adopted older brother for our son Adam and a dear friend to us. A visit with his family was a wonderful opening to the reunion time. Tim and Jeannie, our farm partners, have their children and grandchildren visiting for the week. Our family and Michael’s brother and his family are here for the weekend. The farm echoes with the sound of laughter, children’s voices and roosters crowing, songs of praise and thanksgiving to my ears.
Michael’s parents, especially his mother, would have loved this party. Twenty two of the Hester clan gathered... children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, husbands and wives, girlfriends... and a new generation of children began to hear the family stories while creating some new ones of their own. This reunion will be remembered by the youngest generation, six boys and one little girl, as the Year of the Chicken. Playing with the chickens, catching them and petting them and naming them kept the six boys occupied. We had to schedule rest periods for the hens and rooster. Speedy, a little Rhode Island Red hen, was the one who got away while visiting outside the chicken yard. It took thirty minutes and ten adults to catch Speedy and put her up.
Family Tee shirts, a hay ride, a family picture taken by Tim, food and more food, doughnuts of every color and kind from Megan’s new job at Krispy Kreme, Angie and her boys sleeping in the pop up camper, sleepy dirty children who fall into bed without a whimper at night, parents and grown up children telling hilarious stories of how and when they fainted (a genetic vagal nerve response shared by at least six of them), mule rides (the mule was renamed the party-paddy wagon) with six little boys yelling and laughing as we rode up and down the hills, children riding Junie B, Will’s face split in half with a grin and a giggle as Junie B trotted uphill, Aidan insisting on saying grace at every meal, Max tenderly cradling a hen in his arms, Mead sitting at the wheel of the keyless mule driving in his imagination, Mason sitting on the tractor pretending to be Pop, Matthew, full of stories of coyotes and snakes, finds a plethora of tadpoles to bring to Nana’s water feature, and little Anna Kate watching them all, is a still point in the midst of flurried activity, memories of times past with gratitude overflowing, hope for the future in the young ones who are beloved reminders of days gone by... family at its untidy unruly best.
My life, like the family reunion, sometimes seems to be careening along accompanied by roller coaster ups and downs, much like a mule ride. But this one weekend gives me another image for my late mid-life early old age stage of life, an image of the fullness of time, hills wreathed with flowers and fruit, our children bearing and rearing the next generation. Joy at my age is always balanced with the sure and certain knowledge that Job times come and go but Love lives forever. So this day I give thanks for the “fullness I have received, grace upon grace.” I remember that I am not alone and give thanks for all of my family present and those departed from this life. To love, to be loved and to live with the One who is Love, will sustain me in the winter months that are coming. It is more than enough.