(Guest blogger is Sam Paravonian. Thank you Sam!)
Occasionally on Saturday mornings my father would take my brother (about a year and a half younger than me) and me for little over a mile walk to visit a shirttail relative of his from the old country. The man and his family lived in a two story building on Belvidere Street near Jackson Street. The family lived on the upper floor and owned and operated a neighborhood “convenience store.” Even though the morning business was light but steady, we always had opportunity to chat a while and even have some candy and/or gum which my brother and I thoroughly enjoyed.
I thought the contact between two long time relatives would be more overtly joyous, friendly and warm with more loud laughter and back-slapping rather than the more sedate, polite, and outwardly civil behavior which I observed. Furthermore, the mother never came down to the store to see us, and even more disappointing to me, she would not allow their son who was my age to come down to play with me and my brother. What’s going on here? I wondered.
Well! I learned the answer much later; I fact about 30-35 years ago when my wife and I drove to New Jersey to visit my sister Adrien (thirteen years older than me) and her family. While talking about our good old days and experiences in Waukegan I just mentioned that I never figured out the coolness and distance among our family and my father’s shirttail relatives. My sister was very surprised that I never knew and said, “Let me tell you.”
Shortly after my parents’ marriage and my mother came to Waukegan and became settled, she and my father invited his relative and wife to have lunch or some meal them in their home. After conversations and whatever, my mother invited them to the dining room. When my father’s shirttail relative saw the table all set, he said, “Mrs. Paravonian sets a fine table!” His wife then resentfully and bitterly said “All these years and every day I prepare a table for you and you never say that to me!” After that she stayed away and the relationship cooled.
I think about the missed fun times and joyful experiences our families could have shared but have missed over the years.
Good advice from apostle Paul: “Get rid of all bitterness…..” Ephesians 4:31
Sam Paravonian
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