Posts Tagged ‘brothers and sisters’
Hays Gang
We got the gang back together again yesterday for a little face-to-face catching up. The five surviving Hays siblings are successful in gathering all in one place every 18 months or so, and we try to capture photographic evidence that it truly happened. This time, we met at Elliott’s house in Richfield, which is mostly central to our distribution of homes to the north, south, and east of there.
It’s mind-boggling to fathom how much life experience has occurred since the time when we would have all lived under the same roof. It would have been in the farmhouse at Intervale Ranch on the border of Eden Prairie and Edina.
At a gathering we achieved in January of 2020, one of our group shots included what has become a meme where Elliott turns his back to the camera. Somewhere, I know there is a shot where he did that at the house Cyndie and I owned in Eden Prairie, but Cyndie’s quick search found this one from 2020:
Here is how we looked yesterday…
It makes us laugh every time.
I LOVE my siblings!
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Friendly Family
That was fun! Just hanging with my brothers and sisters for an afternoon after not being altogether for three years.
I feel so lucky to have siblings who all get along and seamlessly enjoy time together regardless of how many months might pass between visits. Yesterday included plenty of laughs over memories of our shared childhood experiences, including some details we don’t all agree on. Honestly, one thing that I’m becoming more certain about as I age is that I am not certain about any precise details conjured in my memories.
No matter how clear my memory of past events seems, it is only fair to qualify them as my vague recollections.
With some luck, the date we picked for a summer weekend gathering will work for all our extended families and we can have a larger span of time together for sharing stories. The hours we were together yesterday only scratched the surface of catching up with each person.
In the same way that time seems to fly by when you are having fun, it also can sail away from you when you aren’t paying attention. In a blink, years can pass between sibling get-togethers. Throw in a pandemic to wipe out another big chunk of time and it makes it hard to remember the last gathering.
That’s too long between visits for a family that is so much fun to be around. Here’s hoping we can work on improving that in the future.
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Siblings Again
Cyndie and I are driving up to North Branch, Minnesota, today for a planned gathering of my Hays siblings. There were a couple of farther-reaching Hays relation reunions that were canceled by the pandemic and I don’t believe the five of us have been in the same place at the same time since January 2020. Yesterday, I scoured the photo archives of my blog for a record of our gatherings throughout the last decade for comparison, and hopefully, to coerce us to get an up-to-date portrait while we are together today.
In my search, I came across some shots from when we were kids that I’ll insert to start this gallery.
abt. 1960: Judy holding me, Elliott, Mary, Linda (1952-1997)
abt 1961: Judy, Mary, John, Elliott, Linda (1952-1997) holding David
with Mom, abt. late 1990s – early 2000s in Eden Prairie
Brothers, maybe?
abt 2009: Wasn’t everybody, but close.
Winter 2014, Beldenville.
Summer 2017, Richfield.
Summer 2018, Richfield.
Winter 2020, North Branch
We don’t tend to choreograph our positioning with any regularity, do we? It will keep you guessing who each person is.
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Relative Something 