So Many Relatives

My Uncle Elmer Kreider died last Thursday. In my mother's family of 11 children, Elmer was the 6th child (my mother was the 5th). He married my Aunt Bertha and together they had 9 children. Bertha died in 1994 and in 2000, Uncle Elmer married my Aunt Martha who had lost her husband (my Uncle Harold) in 1996. Harold and Martha had nine children as well, so when Elmer and Martha married each other they had a combined family of 18 children and their children were actually first cousins! This also means that Elmer married his sister-in-law and Martha married her brother-in-law. If you are confused by now that is okay. I am confused as well.

Both these families had been ones that joined the Eastern Mennonite Church in the late sixties. This was a very difficult time for the Kreider family and a great divide was created between the siblings that chose to not join the Eastern Church and those that did. This rift was never overcome and I rarely saw my Kreider cousins except at an occasional family reunion. After the split of the Eastern Church, we did not visit with these families anymore. I'm wise enough to know that there are two sides to every conflict, but growing up I was under the opinion that we were not welcome in these families because we were heathens and destined for hell.

I do have some pleasant memories of playing with cousins that were closest to my age before the families went their separate ways. There were 4 of us girl cousins who were born the same year and we enjoyed each other's company and although we didn't see each other very often, it was always good to catch up with them again when we got together. I sense that my generation does not have the hostility toward each other that my parents did. Many of them came to my mother and father's funerals and I and my siblings really appreciated it.

Lester, Gene and Rhoda, and Steve and I made plans to go together to Uncle Elmer's viewing on Tuesday evening. We knew that these viewings draw tremendously large crowds and the fact that Uncle Elmer had been a bishop in the Eastern church for 36 years would only increase the numbers that would come to pay their respect to his family. There was a three hour afternoon viewing and then the evening viewing was from 6:00 to 9:00.  We decided to go late in the hopes of avoiding the fullest and busiest part of the evening.

We pulled into the parking lot at 8:35 pm. Even in the dark, we could see that it was a mass of black cars and vans. We walked to the back of the church and two kind gentleman greeted us at the door. We stuck out like sore thumbs. Everyone around us was dressed in very plain dress and all heads turned to look at us. The men looked at us inquiringly and then hesitantly asked who we were. We explained that our mother had been a sister to the deceased. This gave them pause and they appeared to be uncertain about what to do. Then one of them said that the line began in the basement and that there would be a two hour wait. Did we want to stay? We tried not to appear shocked and after looking at each other we responded that yes we would stay. We had not come all this way for nothing and we resigned ourselves to not getting home until well after midnight.

As we entered the basement (this was a fairly large church) we saw that it was full of people sitting on chairs. This was the first stop in the waiting game. After about an hour wait in the basement you would get moved up to the pews in the sanctuary where you would wait another hour until finally being allowed to join the line at the back of the church that moved to the front and greeted the family.

The five of us signed the guest register and then as we moved further into the basement, one of the gentlemen that had met us at the door, motioned for us to follow him. Questioningly, we did as we were told. He took us right up the basement steps, into the sanctuary and to the back of the line that was waiting to walk up to the casket. We had been bumped ahead of all the people in the basement and all the people sitting in the sanctuary! He told us that since we were family, they decided to move us through. We were elated but also a little embarrassed. As we waited in the line, we saw more cousins who were patiently sitting on the benches, waiting their turn. They were as close family as we were, but they were not given the red carpet treatment. My cousin Martha came over to talk to me and asked how we got so fortunate, because they had already be waiting an hour and a half. I said I had no idea and we just laughed. It was good to talk with her again. As we made are way up to the front, more relatives came and talked with us. As I looked around, I did not see one other person other than the five of us that was not dressed conservatively. I think that this was the reason we were bumped up. Everyone else just treated the two hour wait as a social time where they caught up with friends and family. I believe they thought we would be uncomfortable in this setting for an extended period of time and so moved us to the front of the line.

I have a total of 67 cousins on the Kreider side and 18 of them were in the viewing greeting line. They were easy to talk with and they seemed genuinely appreciative that we came to pay our respects. We may have nothing in common as far as the way we live and our religion, but we are family. This is important. As different as they are from me, I respect how they choose to live. I hope that they can do the same for me.

PS. If you think 67 cousins is a lot, Steve has 74 cousins on the Rohrer side. Both our mothers come from a family of 11 children and many of them had large families. Neither of us can begin to put names to all our cousins. I find that kind of sad.

Empty Nest Goals

Well, now that Steve and I are more or less official empty nesters (Megan is not living at home this year as she is in her second and last year of earning an Associate's Degree in Ag Business at Penn State), I have decided to make a few goals for myself.

1. Read through the Bible. It has been many years since I have actually followed a plan and read through the Bible in one year. Megan made the comment that she was going to do it this year and I thought it would be nice to do it together. We started the beginning of September and have made our way through part of Genesis and the entire book of Job. I will admit that I was happy to get done with Job and move back to Genesis. The book of Job is well...just a little repetitive. I kind of feel sorry for Job's friends because I think they were really trying to be supportive. I really like the fact that they sat with him in silence for seven days. It was when they opened their mouths that they got in trouble. This is something good for me to remember.
2. Finish Megan's scrapbook.  For each of my children I have made a scrapbook from birth to 18 years of age. Megan's got stuck after her Junior year and I need to finish it. It has been laying around for too long. I started sorting and going through pictures last evening and already I can't believe how long ago it seems since Megan was 17. What a difference a couple of years can make in a person's life. High school is just high school and once you leave those halls, you tend to become a different person and start a whole new life. I need to finish this book while I still have some memory of those high school days.
3. Clean my upstairs. My upstairs is a disaster. No one except Megan has used the upstairs for years and it has become a place to throw things to get them out of the way. I tried to walk through one of the old bedrooms the other day and it was so cluttered I could hardly get through. This fall, I need to make some sort of organization out of the chaos. Just for an example, the old toilet in the upstairs bathroom broke and we replaced it several months ago. Instead of taking the old one completely out and to the junk, it is still sitting in the bathroom and when Megan comes home she has to walk around it. That is totally unacceptable. Why do we leave things go like this? Does anyone else do this or are we that abnormal?
4. Lose some weight. Ha. This will by far be the most challenging. With everyone out of the house, Steve and I decided to take the "easy" (losing weight is never easy) way (and most expensive) and join one of those weight loss plans where you have the food delivered to your door. We are planning a trip to Europe in early December and would like to be a few pounds lighter by then. We are about three weeks into it and of course the weight isn't coming off as fast as we would like, but it hasn't been too bad. Having your food choices already decided for you, has certainly made sticking to the plan easier. We will see where it takes us. (I'm suspicious that Steve is cheating a little!) I'm not holding my breath.

So...those are my main goals going into this fall season. Since I don't have to spend any time with meal planning, hopefully it will be easier for me to accomplish everything. We will see. I can be quite a procrastinator when there is something in front of me that I really don't want to do. Hopefully, writing this out, will give me the motivation to follow through.

Winning Something You Don't Deserve

Have you ever won something that you really didn't deserve to win? Well, I don't usually win anything, let alone something I don't deserve, but let me tell you about Thursday.

Gene & Rhoda had invited Steve and me to join them for the Friendship Community Annual Golf Classic. This is of course a fundraiser for Friendship. We had done a couple of other golf benefits, so we were happy to participate with them in this one.

First, let me say that I am not a good golfer at all. I am not even an average golfer. I would probably be classified as a "lousy" golfer. My swing is terrible and I basically can't even hit the ball with irons or hybrids. I do like the driver and I can sometimes get a fairly good and long drive off the tee. I only started playing it about 5 years ago and I don't play that often, but I do enjoy it. We like to play at Willow Valley which is just 9 holes and is easy to walk and the holes aren't too difficult.

When you play a Scramble which is how all benefit golf tournaments are played, everyone hits the ball and then out of the four the best ball is chosen and everyone hits from that spot and you continue this way right onto the green and into the cup. The guys have to tee off a lot further back then the ladies so sometimes it can be an advantage to have women playing with you who can get nice, long shots on their first drive and thus give you a better placement for your next fairway shot. So the hope was that Rhoda and I could help our team by hitting good drives off the tee. Well, Rhoda did her part, but I was off even to my standards. I couldn't do anything right. Usually the ball just dribbled a little bit in front of me, or I missed it completely. Sometimes it went a little bit, but I never had a good, solid hit that amounted to anything. It was a little frustrating, but I tried to enjoy the beautiful day and good company and forget about my poor golf game. When we were pretty close to being finished (I think it was either our 15th or 16th hole) I put my tee in the ground as usual, set my ball on it, and swung my club with a hope and a prayer. It was a beautiful, long, straight shot and by far the best I had all day, which wasn't saying much because I hadn't been hitting anything cleanly. I was relieved to have finally gotten at least one good drive.
   
Gene & Rhoda drove their cart up to my ball and I heard them saying something to themselves and when Steve and I got there, they told us that this was one of the designated holes that had a prize attached to it.  There was a rope down the center of the fairway and a prize would be awarded to the man and woman whose ball landed closest to it off of their tee shot. Well, my ball was about 2 feet to the right of the rope! We marked the spot and sure enough at the end of the day I was the winner! I received a $75.00 gift card to the golf club's pro shop. I was able to purchase a pair of $70.00 golf shoes (I didn't own golf shoes before).
    
I was happy to have won, but at the same time I felt very undeserving and even a little embarrassed.  I had that one lucky shot and it landed me a prize. The rest had played a much better game of golf than I had, and they received nothing. I have always said that life isn't fair, so I guess this is just another example of how the least deserving person comes out on top sometimes. I will definitely appreciate my new golf shoes. Now, if there was just some way that they could help to improve my game!