I went to my mother’s hometown last week for practical reasons. After our action-packed NS3 conference in Kansas City wrapped up, I drove west to check in on my mother and sister for a few days.
What I hadn't fully appreciated was the timing. My brother came from Colorado, and our aunt and uncle were hosting a family reunion in the park; bringing together a sprawling network of cousins, spouses, children, grandchildren, and stories that extend far beyond the people I grew up knowing well. There were more than 40 of us by the time the reunion was in full swing, which is a meaningful percentage of a town with a population of about 3,900. Some faces were deeply familiar. Some I was meeting for the first time.
The gathering filled a pavilion in the city park with folding chairs, coolers, paper plates, and conversations that began midstream as though no time had passed at all.
I've written before about my mother's hometown mostly as a place connected to memory. The now empty downtown buildings. The routines and places that shaped childhood. The strange feeling of returning somewhere that still knows your name, while no longer fully belonging to it yourself.
But this trip felt different.
The town itself seemed busier and much more vibrant than the last time I was here. There were reunions happening all over town on Memorial Day weekend. People returning. Generations overlapping. Everywhere I looked there seemed to be evidence that life here wasn't simply being remembered. It was still unfolding.
That was certainly true in the pavilion.
One minute I was catching up with cousins I hadn't seen in years. The next I was trying to figure out how everyone was connected to everyone else. Children were being introduced as someone's son or daughter. Grandchildren were giggling and playing in the same park where we once played as little kids at family reunions. Family stories were being told and retold. And every so often, one of the little kids would laugh or make an expression that unmistakably belonged to an earlier generation.
Somewhere in the flow of conversations that afternoon, my aunt mentioned that her cousin Kathy, who had driven in from Minnesota, worked in title insurance. That immediately caught my attention.
Of course you know the ongoing joke in the title industry that when someone asks what you do for work, nobody has any idea what title insurance actually is. We are inadvertent conversation killers at parties.
So I said to Kathy, "I speak a little bit of title, and since nobody ever knows what we do, I thought I should come say hello."
A few seconds later, as we compared notes about our respective corners of the industry, Kathy’s eyes began to sparkle. "You're Mary Schuster! I read your column every week. I love the America 250 series you're doing."
As it turned out, we had worked together years earlier on industry education programs, long before either of us realized we were connected through family.
It felt completely consistent with the rest of the weekend; old threads revealing themselves to have been connected all along.
Later, as everyone was beginning to leave, I went over to hug "Cousin Kathy" goodbye.
She smiled and said, "I love spending Tuesdays With Mary."
Meaning this blog. Hi Kathy!
Somehow that felt perfectly fitting too.
It was that kind of weekend.
Long conversations with my brother and sister, laughter with cousins I hadn't seen in nearly twenty years, recalling family lore while we decorated graves, a brief spark of recognition from a mother almost entirely lost to dementia, and the easy rhythm that sometimes reappears when there's enough shared history underneath it.
At one point, after exchanging cell phone numbers with cousins and their spouses, I joked, "This is how we stop seeing each other only at funerals."
They agreed.
I think we all understood what was meant.
It was a very good week in my mother's hometown.
Until Next Time,
Mary Schuster
Chief Knowledge Officer
October Research, LLC
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