Guilt trip to Peoria.

So my grandma, road warrior that she is, makes an annual pilgrimage to Peoria Illinois for her Rosenbohm family reunion. Now I might be able to cobble together some of the genealogy she has in her brain, but I could only give you shades of a story without names, really. Long story short this family reunion has been going on for ages and all of us grand kids were shuttled to Illinois at some point in our lives with varying degrees of willingness. I've been told that I went a couple of times, but the sum total of my memories of that family reunion are of a slice of cherry pie and the three legged dog I palled around with all day while I was "supposed" to be getting to know my very distant cousins (whom I would never get to see again unless I drove back to Illinois! Great incentive to build relationships, eh?)

Well this year , like any other year, grandma starts guilting the family about missing the family reunion. "Gee," she says with a great sigh, "I so very badly want to go see [insert familial name here]. It may be my last chance to go and I just can't convince a single member of my own family to muster the interest in knowing their relations. I have, must be almost 40 people on my own family tree including grandkids and great grandkids, and not one of them will ride with me to Peoria." To this I reply, "Seems to me that 40 people makes a family reunion! I know last year we had more than 20 of them right here in your living room. Not many of us have ties to Illinois (correctly: none of us do) but we all have memories from right here in Morgantown. Bet you could convince our family to come here and visit with one another." "That's not the same." says she. It is becoming clear to me, she wants an excuse to spend an entire week showing off her brood to the families in Illinois, she will tell and retell our life stories until the subject of said tale sits rapt in her story, wishing his own life actually resembled the tale grandma spins for me. Suddenly every building we exit was burning and every minor award was noticed by the entire state and the story goes on. I have done the same this summer already, sat in another room listening to grandma retell the story of our day. By my memory, we scooted around some sweaters and vacuumed a bit before playing cribbage. By her account we have moved furniture to the garage in preparation for the church yard sale and we have taken her winter wardrobe out of the closet to make room for the summer wardrobe and we've gone through old papers in our effort to "downsize her house." I wish I could find this alternate reality she lives in.