This year’s family reunion had a wonderful surprise: pictures of the original twelve Strange siblings, especially my guardian angel since I’ve been traveling around the world and living in Austin, my Papa, Floyd B. Strange.
And I was especially moved to see my grandmother, who married into the Strange family, was the first Avon lady in Cascade, VA, could spin entertaining stories while cooking up delicious food, Mama Bea, Beatrice (Adams) Strange.
As I studied the sepia-toned pictures of my ancestors two generations before me, I was filled with a sadness that I only had a thin volume summary, given the wealth of life experience these twelve siblings and their spouses represented. One result of the closeness of the dozen siblings is that we’ve just celebrated our 71st Strange family reunion.
Last year at the family reunion, I made my novel reading debut, which had been a bit nerve-wracking since I could scarcely find an excerpt that contained kid-friendly language. I chose to read a BBQ scene since it dealt with food, a highlight of our family reunion. I sold several books based on the double-entendre with (meat)balls. As a matter of fact, one of my cousins informed me that she loved reading Tribe of One so much that she completed it in two weeks. She kept laughing about all of Salome’s antics.
This year, instead of doing another reading, I gave all members of my immediately family a Tribe of One t-shirt in order to “represent.”
Yet the main two reasons I attend our yearly family reunions are to catch up with relatives who I hardly ever talk with throughout the rest of the year and to eat too much delicious food that will take me about a month to exercise off!
