The Family Reunion

Summer - tis the season for long sunny days, swimming pools and family reunions.  We attended our licorice family reunion yesterday.  No one is named licorice, but as a family going back several generations, perhaps since the beginning of time, we all love licorice.  Especially black licorice.  It is in the genes.  As a manifestation of this fact, a large basket of licorice was placed on a table near the pavilion where the reunion was held and family members were able to eat at will.  There was lots of licorice in that basket, and by the end of the evening, the basket was empty. The black licorice went first of course.

Along with a love for licorice, the family loves to use the giant hill near my aunts house as a slip and slide. My aunt and uncle have access to a giant piece of plastic that they lay out down the hill.  The result is sheer bliss.  You get to ride down forever and then you hike up the hill so you can do it all again.

After  eating a picnic lunch and getting wet on the slide for a while,  the adults and several children gathered in the pavilion to hear family stories about my grandma and her siblings.  Most of them have died now, but their spirits are still strong and live on through the rest of us. I love to hear the stories about relatives and how they are just like us.  One aunt told the story of my great grandmother and how she liked to play jokes.  She lived well into her 90's so I remember her and went to her house several times while I was growing up.  She had the best toys and games for kids to play, things we didn't see anywhere else, and my cousins and I had a grand time playing in her backyard.

As everyone gathered to hear the stories, the kids would go back and forth from the pavilion to the water slide.  Ammon would come and sit next to me and listen to the stories and then head down the water slide.  He would take off his hearing aid and implant, hand them to me to hold, go down the slide, come back and listen again for a while and then go back to the slide.

At some point, Ammon got upset at his sister and came running over to the pavilion.  Ammon is not quiet when he doesn't have his devices on and as I saw him running towards me, I could tell he was upset.  I knew right at that moment, that he was going to run over to me, tell me why he was upset, and that every relative listening to the stories would hear what he had to say.  I got up to meet him so that we were a ways off from the pavilion when he expressed his thoughts to me.  He was mad at his sister, and in typical Ammon style, he was quite loud as he told me the details. Ammon does not seem to be bothered by the presence of other people when he is expressing himself when upset. He doesn't always respond to the "evil eye" either which is the look every mother gives when she is non-verbally telling her offspring to be quiet.  I was glad that I met Ammon a bit away from the pavilion so he didn't interrupt the story telling. Ammon also can't fully hear my responses when he doesn't have devices on. Chance can read my lips but Ammon has not mastered that yet.

We had a lovely time at the reunion and we also got to explain some things about implants and deafness to extended family. Our boys are the only deaf children on either side of the family.  A few of the more senior relatives on both sides have hearing aids, but that is a different ball game with different causes.