Touched my family

Even from afar came shouts of recognition
joyful voices rang across the disdained years and
faces of our childhood unforgot fit instantly familiar names;
voices still the same despite the extra grey, the extra lines,
like sacred family metaphors not blurred with passing time.

Uncles greeted cousins, nieces hailed their aunts in private spaces
kept for kith and kin, as if by chance this place, and the children’s
children ran and played while old familiars sought out old familiars,
said gooday. Some, adrift in paternity-disdained reserve then
feigned acquaintance, made clamorous greetings

never really meeting friendly eyes; we observed
no contradiction - in the art of being Gillgren
ambiguity's a smile disguised. And as more arrived
to swell the throng shyness shifted and was crushed
by this such overwhelming warmth of welcome.

That was handshakes day,
a day of greetings, of hugs and patent kisses,
of faded family jokes and famous legends, a day
we traded lissom lies and downright deconstructions,
disavowals and denials, embellishments and exhortations,

trials and travails, and everywhere without exception,
vibrant, friendly laughter filled the air. We packed the missing years,
relentlessly connecting memories, seeking explanations,
listening with desperate passion. We met again,
to celebrate our names, to celebrate our Patriarch,

Johannes Efraim Gillgren.
The moment which defined it came belatedly
amid a blush of ancestral patience (infused, no doubt,
by alcohol and calmed by pious charity).
We sat together, splendidly naïve on the threshold of similitude,

watching images of Johannes and forebears on screen.
The images would never cause abjuring sentiment
(we have the pictures in our albums - treasure every one),
but was no less a shock to find our hows and whys, where
with delinquent validation bared, we’d all endured yet come

by signal cause - and now we knew who needed who.
Mine weren’t the only tear-filled eyes, I cried
for Harriet and Johannes, and my parents who had died;
I cried without a hint of shame to love them dear,
I'd loved them secretly for fear of its discovery; yes, I tell you this,

for how so wrong it seems. And in the closeness of that room
reached out and touched my family.
© I.D. Carswell
Peachester, April 2005

After the Gillgren Family reunion in Rotorua, 2005