Family

reunions - you either love them or dread them.

I've

approached these unexpected, or

planned-five-years-in-advance, get-togethers with a

mixture of curiosity and apprehension.

The first

real family reunion I attended was a small-scale

Thanksgiving soiree put together by my aunt in New

Jersey. That was 13 years ago and I haven't seen or heard

from her since. It seems that she was unprepared for the

antics of two boys under the age of 4 in her House

Beautiful.

I tried to

smooth out the skid marks from their Matchbox cars which

tracked across her Italian leather sofa, but the

softening agent I used only proceeded to lift out the

color. My older son attempted to plunge the clogged

toilet to no avail. And the spilled cranberry juice on

the heirloom lace tablecloth was clearly an accident.

I heard

through the family grapevine that my aunt moved to a

condo somewhere in south Florida the day after we left.

It turns out her driver also quit following a really

inconsequential fender bender on the Turnpike when my

younger son beamed him on the head with a size two Buster

Brown shoe on the way to Newark Airport.

The time I

met with my then-husband's family on Isle of Palms

outside Charleston several years ago was truly an

experience. In the mix were seven children, six parents

and one grandmother. The beach house contained two double

beds, three single beds, one crib and zero sleep sofas.

Now, do the

math. Let me tell you, rattan porch furniture has no give

and leaves bodily scars.

Aside from

the catch-as-catch-can sleeping arrangements, the 18

hours we stayed together were fairly enjoyable. About six

hours were spent scouting for the alligator that

inhabited the nearby lagoon. It took us another six hours

to hunt down the missing children and the final six found

me curled in the fetal position on a torturous 40-inch

love seat.

Funerals

prompt those spur-of-the-moment reunions we all dread. A

family passing two years ago reunited me with a slew of

cousins I had forgotten I had. I found that my eldest

cousin had indeed divorced her first husband, a Jamaican

limbo dancer and remarried a hard-working construction

worker.

Another

cousin was bi-coastal and had succeeded in maintaining a

year around tan. My favorite female cousin had become a

top notch secretary and an authority on Disney World,

claiming two visits a year for the past 15 years.

We

celebrated the long and full life of the departed with a

three-hour lunch at a well-known Jersey hotel, topped off

with a round of decadent desserts.

"You

know, we really shouldn't wait until somebody dies to get

together," my favorite cousin said.

Maybe we

should track down our missing aunt, reportedly living

somewhere north of Coral Springs and south of Boca, and

meet at Disney World with our exes and their

conglomeration of assorted relations. It's a small world,

after all.

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