The Free Reunion at the Lake

The post went up in the family group on a Monday in May, while I was at my desk at the dental office arguing with an insurance company about a crown.

“Holm Reunion, second Saturday in July, Pine Lake pavilion. $75 per adult, kids under 12 free. Check or Venmo to me by June 1. No exceptions this year, it isn’t fair to the ones who pay on time.”

Under that, in a separate line, Tracy had written one more sentence. “If $75 is too much, there’s always next year.”

I read that line three times while the woman from the insurance company played hold music in my ear. It was the kind of sentence you could defend. That was what bothered me about it.

There was a little row of likes under the post already. A couple of cousins had written “Paid!” with a thumbs up. Somebody’s daughter had asked if dogs were allowed. Nobody had said anything about the last line.

My mother called at a quarter to eight. She never calls after seven on a weeknight unless somebody has died, so I picked up with my heart already going.

“Nobody’s dead,” she said, before I could ask. “I just wanted to tell you before you heard it from somebody else. I’m not going to the reunion this year.”

I turned the burner down under the potatoes. “Mom. You’ve never missed a reunion in your life.”

“I missed the one when you were born,” she said. “And now I’m missing this one. It’s fine, Amy. It’s just a picnic.”

My mother is 72. She worked thirty-one years at the creamery in Little Falls and now she lives on her Social Security in the left side of a duplex on Third Street. She keeps her grocery list on the back of an envelope and she crosses things off in pencil so she can reuse the envelope.

“Is it the money,” I said.

She did not answer right away. I could hear her television in the background, the weather, a man talking about storms coming across the Dakotas.

“It’s a hundred and fifty dollars for the two of us,” she said finally. “That’s my groceries for the month, honey. And Edna won’t let me pay hers anyway. She says she’s not going to be a charity case at her own family’s picnic.”

The two of us meant my mother and Great-aunt Edna. Edna is my grandfather’s sister. She was 93 that spring, the oldest Holm left alive, and she lived in an assisted living apartment four blocks from my mother.

For as long as I could remember, my mother had driven Edna to the reunion. They always came in the same order: Mom’s car pulling into the lot, the passenger door swinging open, Edna’s cane coming out first like a periscope, then Edna.

“Edna hasn’t been since her hip,” I said.

“Edna hasn’t been since her hip,” my mother agreed, “and then she hasn’t been since the money. She’d go if it were free. She’d go if she had to crawl. But she won’t let anybody pay for her and she won’t pay seventy-five dollars for a drumstick. Her words.”

I laughed, because that sounded so much like Edna, and then I stopped laughing, because it was true.

“Let me pay for you both,” I said.

“No,” Mom said, in the voice that meant the conversation was over. “You and Josh have the boys. I’m not taking your money for a picnic. I’ll see everybody at Christmas.”