Family in North Carolina

I have to confess, I was nervous about meeting Ed’s family in North Carolina this past weekend. It was one of those moments when you insert the only thing you know into the circumstances to come. And every time I think about introducing Ed to a mob of my aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents, well…that might be a situation best avoided.

Thankfully Ed’s Aunt Sandy, Aunt Carol and Aunt Carol’s three children, their spouses and five grandchildren were wonderful to meet. Aunt Sandy, who never married, and Aunt Carol, who is a widow, live together in a older ranch home in a very pleasant neighborhood outside of Charlotte. (The pleasant neighborhood alone was an extremely nice change from Pittsburgh.) They’re in their early 60s. Aunt Sandy is a former hair dresser who struggles to get around after operations that attempted to correct decades of working on her feet. Aunt Carol still works, a couple of days a week at home. Both were welcoming, happy to meet me and delighted to see their “Eddie” again.

We spent Thursday resting after a very nice trip down (the trees changing color in the mountains of West Virginia and Virginia were GORGEOUS!). On Friday, out came the old pictures. Ed has very few pictures of himself growing up and most of those are from his teenage years. His parents don’t have any either. (So bizarre to a firstborn who has twice as many photos than any of her siblings!) But Aunt Sandy had a couple of boxes full of old pictures. Not just of Ed, but of the whole family – black and whites of her and her sisters and parents, grandparents and other relatives; pictures of Ed and his cousins growing up as color came into existence; and more modern pictures of weddings and the next generation. Ed and I sorted through them, putting them in piles I neatly stacked. (The aunts figured out I’m very organized pretty quickly.) And the next afternoon we spent a couple of hours scanning at least half of them into the computer so now Ed has some pictures of himself.

So, when I met the cousins Amy, Dan and Dana the next day along with Amy’s husband Chris and Dan’s wife Erica (Dana’s husband was working) and their kids Seth, Sophia, Logan, Molly and Chase I already knew more than they would have probably liked. And had very nice blackmail pictures within reach. But, truly, it was a never-a-dull-moment time as I got to know the family. Jokes about Dana’s new hair color. (Ronald McDonald red anyone?) Impressing Seth because I hit the target with his Nerf gun on my first try. Holding baby Logan (getting practice!). Lots of laughs and jibes between the siblings. The kids sat down only long enough to eat. And the highlight had to be the never-met-a-stranger-four-year-old Sophia who loved her “new cousins”, dressed up in her Elsa costume and gave everyone a concert of Let it Go complete with a very dramatic bow.

I think I passed the initiation. I did survive through a couple of old family videos. And I proved that I can cook. I might be a little quieter than the rest of the clan, but maybe they need someone like that. Because Aunt Sandy wants us to move to North Carolina. At least then I could guarantee my kids have a nice Southern accent and completely avoid the awful Pittsburgh one!