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Big Change Coming

Big Change Coming

We spent the weekend at our annual Labor Day reunion. Each September we gather, the two branches of our extended family with roots in the northwest Iowa town. For 36 – 48 hours we visit, eat, play, reminisce and create new memories as we have done for almost 25 years.

But this year’s reunion felt different. All weekend, I felt like a character in a fantasy story. You know, the oddball wearing animal skins who materializes at the edge of the forest. She sniffs the air and licks a finger to test the wind. After a brief pronouncement, “The wind is shifting. Big change coming,” her eyes twinkle wisely, and she disappears into the forest.

The cabin we stayed in over Labor Day didn’t have a forest nearby, just a cornfield on one side and a lake on the other. It was sweatshirt weather, too chilly for off-the-shoulder animal skins and prophetic announcements. But all weekend, I was sniffing the air and watching the wind change us.

Some of the children, who were babies and toddlers at the first reunion, are now married. Some are parents of their own babies and toddlers. The babies who joined our midst in the late 80s and early 90s, who made the S.O Weird Cousins videos each year, are college students. They don’t make videos any more. They sit around and catch up on one another’s lives and talk about getting what they call “real jobs” in the next few years.

My siblings and cousins and our spouses are the age our parents were when the reunions first began…though we feel much younger than they did, I’m sure. Our parents are older, grayer, content to observe the goings on instead of leading our energetic troops.

While we sat and ate and played and did all the things we do each Labor Day, our roles shifted slightly. The balance of power tipping ever-so-slightly to the younger generation. The old order of things is drawing to a close, and a new dawn is taking shape.

The wind is shifting. Big change coming.