Family Reunion - Luke Smith

When I was younger,
every few months or so, my brothers, sisters and I
would pile into my Dad's maroon Ford club wagon
and drive on an overly curvy road for hours to a park
where a pile of hicks and decrepit "soon to be..."s sat waiting,
like a pack of cultures to catapult theemselves from their lawn chairs and
picnic tables
onto a cornucopia of casseroles: Green Bean, Corn, Rice, Regular Bean,
Broccoli,
and that weird one with the chips on top.
We ate on paper plates and spooned dish after dish
including that thing my aunt makes with a few pieces of lettuce
floating like icebergs in a bowl of ranch and cashews.
The adults drank tea and the kids Kool-Aid
and after the feast, the bigger ones played basketball
and the younger ones played in the water spigot.
Someone always fell prey to a wasp, and the rides home always smelled like
vomit.
We'd stop at a gas station halfway,
and then the van smelled like vomit and circus peanuts.
With our legs and backs glued with sweat to the polyester seats, the rest of
the trip was spent pleading for our father to turn the AC on high,
but he never would.
Now that I'm older,
we don't have reunions anymore,
but the family got together again last week when my grandmother's last sister
died,
and after the wake, we went to the church basement
and there the same casserole dishes carried my childhood
in the form of green beans, cashews, and broccoli.  The adults drank coffee
this time,
and my brother and I smoked a cigarette behind the church playground
and reflected that
funerals had now become
our family reunions.