Andrew Statum

My stepsister got married. Yay! It was a beautiful ceremony at this place called the Bleu Rock Inn in Washington, Virginia (not DC). Anyway, the weather was crummy leading up to the thing but once Saturday arrived the weather turned crisp and dry and sunny.

Being in the mountains really made me miss Virginia. Back when I was small, my great aunt had a farm near Charlottesville and my mother and I used to go there every year for a week or so. I remember everytime we went turning onto this one road where the Blue Ridge mountains finally came into sight. It was always so magical, leaving the flat world behind for the world of slanted slopes and elevations. Everything smelled so clean and it was quiet and there was a tire swing hanging from this great oak tree (at least I think it was an oak tree but what do I know about botany?) and this stone wall left over from the Civil War which I was told to stay away from because there were snakes living in it.

Man, speaking of the Civil War, talk about nostalgia! That is one collective memory the Southern States will never get over, kind of like Brooklyn and The Dodgers (kind of, but not really). Here's a fun fact that I didn't know until my Uncle said so: Southern historians refer to Civil War battles by the nearest town while Northern historians refer to the same battles by the nearest body of water. So, the Battle of Manassas (Southern) is the same thing as the Battle of Bull Run (Northern), it just depends, more or less, on where the particular historian is from. Huh. Who knew?

Anyway, I got to see Mom and all my aunts and uncles and cousins and my girlfriend got to meet the bunch of them for the first time and everyone loved everyone and got along perfectly ("She's a keeper," Mrs. Winstead, an old church friend, whispered to me before she left). Family reunions are really a showcase for nostalgic recollections. The old people all talked about growing up in Cleveland and the younger of us (all in their late-twenties and early thirties so not that young anymore) rehashed our own teenage dramas. For the entire weekend, everyone was so happy reliving everything that ever happened between us. And you know what? You can ignore my earlier post. Nostalgia is pretty damn awesome!