This past weekend was wonderful for me in every way. It began with the arrival of my beautiful daughter Jessica, and that event in and of itself was enough for me to accurately describe the weekend as wonderful. But it went even further than that. Jessica planned and helped carry out a mini Family Reunion, with our traveling to Elizabeth City to celebrate with various other family members from that area.

I am relating this information in the hope that some of you might consider making plans to put together a family reunion with some of your family members, perhaps some whom you don't see on a regular basis. If you do this, you will probably find, as I did, that spending that couple of days with those whom you love and cherish will result in one of the most memorable experiences of your life.

My brother Rick Gardner and I go back many years (80+), and it was decided that it might be a good idea for he and I to sit down together and just talk with each other about our life experiences, a completely unrehearsed conversation recorded on tape for posterity. We expected this conservation to last approximately an hour, but an hour and a half went by and we were still talking. We relived events about our wonderful mother and father, our brothers and sisters, our spouses and our children, our grandchildren, our nieces and nephews, and others.

We literally could have continued this conversation for several more hours. Rick and I are not only brothers, we are also best friends, and I admire him to the highest. And being in close touch once again with a significant number of our family, some still comparatively young, it reminded me of how blessed I am to have the opportunity to share my life with some of the most wonderful and caring people in the world.   

And as our family sat together late Saturday evening and reminisced, I was so inspired by the many recollections of courage, faith, understanding, forgiveness, and LOVE so freely given by my family over many years, and still being given today. I know that My Emma was smiling from Heaven above. All of this brings to mind words from that beautiful old song, "Precious Memories, How they linger, How they ever flood my soul, In the stillness of the midnight, Precious sacred scenes unfold."

So, Folks, give some serious thought to organizing a family reunion. You'll probably be very glad you did.

Now to close on a humorous note:  Another joke from the legendary Cousin Minnie Pearl. Minnie told about how her relatives, Uncle Nabob and Aunt Ambrosie, were having some disagreement about Nabob's drinking. Minnie said Nabob wasn't drinking anymore, but he wasn't drinking any less either. 

So Aunt Ambrosie decided to try to scare him into sobriety. So late one Friday night, knowing that Nabob would be coming home late from the corner bar, she dressed up in a scary Halloween costume and hid in the bushes near the entrance to their home. As Nabob came weaving up the walkway and approached the entrance, Ambrosie jumped out of the bushes and screamed, "Boo!, I'm the Devil." In response, Nabob calmly reached out his hand and said, "Well shake hands with your Kinfolk, I married your sister!"

Have a wonderful day!