Yes, as crazy as it may sound in the days of the Social Dilemma and lawsuits filed by states against Mark Zuckerberg, I’m grateful for Facebook. These are difficult times. I like to know where my heart is and how my family is doing.
I have sixty-something first cousins. There’s a chapter in my book entitled Sixty-Four First Cousins. I’ve counted them several times and I know I may have missed a couple (some died quite early, some were the age of my dad or mom, so they seemed like aunts and uncles instead of cousins) and three get counted twice because they’re cousins on both sides.
What that means is that my extended family is a large, far flung village. There’s Phyllis in Tulsa, Cheriesa in San Diego, Beverly at St. Andrew’s in Scotland, Tonya in Dallas, Shawn in L.A., another Shawn in Amarillo, Tess in North Carolina, Rusty in Chicago, Lynn in Phoenix, Terry in Boulder, Derek in Little Rock, Carla on the Emerald Coast in Florida, Jade in D.C., Lars in Montana somewhere, dozens (hundreds?) more elsewhere. You get the picture.
We used to have reunions every summer in the mountains of northern New Mexico, but those gatherings were never attended by 100% of my family. Eight or a hundred of us would gather and pitch horseshoes and wander around Red River, coming together each evening for brisket and beans and a prayer where we held hands and bowed our heads to say thanks for such a wide circle. We’d express gratitude for all the others out there that weren’t able to make the trip, the ones we had lost that year. Every year our circle was smaller.
Now we find one another on Facebook instead. I know what Jade’s wedding dress looked like and I’m able to wish her well. Tonya and I haven’t seen each other since a reunion in San Jon when my daughter was two. Now we “see” and “like” each other almost every day. Cheriesa and I had never met (she’s my cousin Beverly’s granddaughter), but she found me on Facebook and called when she was passing through Santa Fe. Now we visit (virtually) on a weekly basis.
Nothing will ever replace those Sunday dinners at Grandma Ayres’ house after church, the sideboard laden with fried chicken, ham, black eyed peas and squash and fried okra, macaroni and tomatoes, mashed potatoes, cream corn, homemade rolls, and then a red velvet cake, German chocolate cake, pecan pie, and Dr. Pepper in the fridge. Nothing will replace playing chase on the front lawn with Susie and Cindy and Mark and David and Kent.
Nothing will replace those alternate Sundays at Granny Terry’s house, the men arguing politics or Ford vs. Chevy at the table, the kitchen full of women doing dishes and sharing gossip, the big kids walking the little ones to the Dairy Queen down the street later in the afternoon, or if we were really lucky, to the Odean Theater for a matinee.
But without social media, we would all now be strangers to each other. I can’t begin to count the descendants of T.E. and Lenora Terry or those of B.F. and Myrtle Ayres. They’re like the twelve tribes these days. They’re a multitude.
And thank goodness they are. I’m grateful to get online this morning, especially in these tumultuous times and see Vicky’s morning walk in Melrose, Hilary’s kids in Bozeman, Kelli’s classroom in Big Spring, sweet Kali in Logan. They are my people. And I am theirs.
Bunny Terry is a native New Mexican who grew up on a farm in northeastern New Mexico. Her first writing job was typing stories on index cards on her family’s Underwood, stories that were uncannily like the ones she read over and over in O Ye’ Jigs and Julips, her favorite childhood book. No one thought to save those index cards for posterity, although there is the theory sarcastically circulated by her siblings that they will certainly be worth millions someday. 