No, I have not fallen off the face of the earth. My brief blogging hiatus came as the result of the four days I just spent in Bell Buckle with the fam for Cousinpalooza – July ’10. This was the first time our whole clan had gathered since Henry’s memorial service, and it was the first time I’d been home to Bell Buckle – Henry’s favorite place in the world – since his death.

For me, the weekend was wonderful and terrible, all at the same time. It was wonderful to be with all the people who loved Henry the most (Henry’s dad and stepmother came down for the weekend too). But it was terrible for me to look at all the cousins ranging in age from newborn to young adults (yes, we consider the Abernathy fam to be cousins – and apparently we are actually distantly related via the Harris line) and wonder why MY child didn’t make it. I mean, we raised him the same way as all of these other healthy, thriving, beautiful children from this generation of our family, and yet he became addicted to drugs and then he died at only 18 years old.

I love every single one of my nieces, nephews and younger cousins with every fiber of my being. I love them like my own. I am so proud of how bright and accomplished and kind each of them are. It just seems so cruel and random and unfair that things went so terribly awry with Henry, who was surrounded with the same love and adoration that all of his cousins enjoy.

And walking around Bell Buckle, I was constantly reminded of Henry – riding his skateboard around town, eating an ice cream cone downtown, visiting with his great grandmother, playing lacrosse in the Abernathys’ backyard, climbing the giant magnolia tree in my mother’s front yard…

I miss him. We all miss him. The world seems off-kilter to me without Henry in it.

On the way home from Bell Buckle yesterday, C said, “Mama, we need to go to the hospital and get Henry now. He’s all better and ready to come home.”

How I wish that were true.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Yesterday my mother closed on the sale of our family home. She’s moving out and moving on. This isn’t the house in which I actually grew up, but it’s in the same small town where I did spend my childhood and teenage years – Bell Buckle, TN – and it’s the house where my parents lived for many years. To my children, this is the iconic “grandma’s house.” It’s where I was married and where my sister danced with my father at her wedding reception in the backyard. We’ve celebrated christenings and Christmases there, and it’s full of every piece of my childhood history that still exists. It’s the last place that my whole, intact, nuclear family – both parents and all three siblings – ever ate a meal together. It’s home.

But as of yesterday, it’s someone else’s home. My mother made the practical decision that it’s just too much house for her to manage by herself any longer, so she decided to sell.  She’s starting a new chapter of her life with the guy she’s been dating for several years. They are building a lake house together in a town several hours away. She’s downsizing and starting over, and as happy as I am for her, it’s also very sad for my siblings and me. Yesterday she sent an email out with her new phone number, saying the phone number that has been in existence as “our” number since I was a little girl would be turned off today. Erasing that number from my phone contacts and replacing it with the new one wasn’t fun for me. And it makes me sad that C will have no memories of the house, and baby-to-be won’t ever set foot inside of it.

Tomorrow my brother, sister, brother in law, husband and various friends will be loading up a truck in Bell Buckle with various furniture and special items that my mother has given us as she sheds her old life, then driving the truck the several hours back to Knoxville.  I am really excited to be inheriting my great-grandmother’s baby grand piano (although trying to figure out how to move a 125 year old baby grand piano 250 miles on the cheap in the midst of everything we are dealing with right now was not easy. Jon and my sibs handled all the details and I am VERY grateful). They are also bringing back my great grandmother’s dining room table – the first “nice” dining room table I’ve ever had, plus it seats at least 12 – and some other things. C is getting a beautiful art deco canopy bed that will become her first “big girl” bed if we ever get an actual room cleaned out and painted for her. It’s kind of overwhelming to have all of these things coming into my house at the moment, because my own abode is totally trashed and chaotic because I’ve barely been home in a month. Truly, our house is a complete wreck right now. But this was the weekend to get the furniture if it was to be gotten, so there you have it.

Although I feel bad that Jon (with C in tow) is down in Bell Buckle tonight and tomorrow handling all of this without my help, I am kind of glad I won’t be there to see the house emptied and closed up for the last time. I think that would have made me too sad. It’s the end of an era in our family’s life.

But life goes on. And I hope that E will enjoy taking lessons on my great grandmother’s piano.

To everything there is a season,
a time for every purpose under the sun.
A time to be born and a time to die;
a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
a time to kill and a time to heal …
a time to weep and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn and a time to dance …
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to lose and a time to seek;
a time to rend and a time to sew;
a time to keep silent and a time to speak;
a time to love and a time to hate;
a time for war and a time for peace.
ecclesiastes 3:1-8

We decided to go to Bell Buckle this weekend to get out of Jon’s hair, as it’s tax season. Since he’s an accountant, he has A LOT of work to do on the weekends this month (and next.) H was in Atlanta for a few days visiting with friends with some girl he identified only to me as “Marie,” so he wasn’t with us. But J, C, E and J’s friend G and I went together and had a grand time. (H is back from Atlanta now, and I’m still trying to get a clear answer on the mystery that is “Marie.” Let me tell you that getting information on a female acquaintance out of a very private 18 year old male requires a lot of tenacious persistence on the part of said male’s mother.)

The night before our weekend excursion, E helped me get his little sister to sleep by pretending to fall asleep with her himself (she likes that.) But then he actually fell asleep. So did she.

On Saturday morning, we hit the road, but not before making a stop at the carwash place where we had the interior of the car decontaminated before picking up J’s friend G, who was going to go with us. C LOVED the auto carwash. It both mesmerized her and terrified her. Here she and E are – the latter looking a bit like a young Unabomber in this photo – watching our car get run thru the – in C’s words – “very, VERY scary soapy machine.”

My sister and her fam had preceded us to Bell Buckle the day before, so C was very glad to find that NC was already there, waiting for her. The girls enjoyed their favorite activity: taking a bath together.

C was also very glad to see her cousin N, who is just about 9 months older than she and NC.

NC spent some quality alone time playing toddler app games on my sister’s iPhone. She is only 2 and she already knows how to pull up her favorite color and shape sorting games on the phone, and how to play them and change games when she’s ready.

We absolutely loved having J’s friend G along with us for the weekend. He’s a fantastic kid – polite, funny and enthusiastic about jumping into the chaotic maelstrom that is a house party weekend with our family.

Robert & Nicole had to go to a charity event Saturday night, so we made them pose for photos, like the prom.

In fact, I made them pose just as if they were at the prom.

While we were at Robert and Nicole’s all weekend, C developed a deep, obsessive attachment to one of cousin N’s toys – an animatronic puppy whom she named “Spots.” After she carried it around for 24 hours straight without letting go of it once, Aunt Nicole kindly offered to let her “borrow” Spots to take back to Knoxville. She was so excited by this offer that she immediately announced that we needed to leave for Knoxville RIGHT NOW, and she threw a fit when we told her we weren’t going yet. She thought that if she didn’t take Aunt Nicole up on the offer right away, somebody might have a change of heart and take Spots away from her.

When we finally did go home on Sunday evening, she clutched Spots the whole way back, including during the NUMEROUS bathroom breaks necessarily involved in a 3.5 hour car trip with two teenagers, a 12 year old, a toddler and a pregnant woman. Here you see C and Spots touring public restrooms all across Tennessee.

Oh, and the best quote of the weekend came from my grandmother, while chatting with me and my dear friends since middle school, David & Harry, who were also in Bell Buckle for the weekend. She told us that, “All of the dictators I’ve known have actually been quite nice in person.” (For the record, those dictators include but may not be limited to Baby Doc, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos and the Shah of Iran.)

My friend Harry, whom I’ve known since we were both 12 years old, and with whom I went to this prom (he’s pictured here with me) dug up this photo of the two of us at our senior prom.

Me: Laura Ashley dress (bien sur!), patterned gloves (!!) and tights a la Madonna circa 1984, topped off with bad, bad, VERY BAD perm (what the hell was I thinking?)

So I am notoriously bad at keeping secrets. But I was actually able to keep a pretty big one recently, that culminated in a huge surprise birthday party for my sister and sister-in-law in Bell Buckle. The secret was quite elaborate; many of the kids in our family were in on it, too. And my brother and brother-in-law pulled it off wonderfully on Saturday evening. Both Nicole and Betsy were VERY surprised. There was a band, great food, and friends my sister hadn’t seen in ten years came to celebrate with us. It was awesome. Everyone had a great time.

And Betsy was further surprised with some quite lovely diamond earrings from her husband, who really did it up right this year. (Well played, Ray!). I mention the earrings because in some of the photos from the party (below) you will see various male family members trying the earrings on for comic effect, which might have left you with the impression that all the men in our fam routinely sport diamond studs in their ears. Nope. The guys were just checkin’ out Betsy’s new bling.

And the adorably, deliciously fat newborn (well, he’s 3 months now, but that’s sort of still a newborn) in the photos is my newest baby cousin. Isn’t he yummy looking? I totally want to gobble him up.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

My mother is still trying to sell her house. Pass the word to anyone who might be interested.

It’s an awesome house, and our family has so many great memories there (for one thing, Jon and I were married in the backyard.) But it’s really too much house now for just my mother. It’s ready for a new family, and a new chapter.

Someone dear to me has died.