The best part of a family reunion

may be the stories traded under shade trees and over plates of barbecue.

I became the newly ordained

family historian at the first ever reunion on my father's side last July,

probably because I'm the only member of the family who has a genealogy

program and a lap top, and knows how to use them. But rather than recording

some previously unknown family lore for eternity, what I got was mainly

names and birth dates of new tots belonging to distant cousins I can't

keep straight except electronically.

The best stories I heard at

the reunion were about in-laws, and not blood relatives, and me without

a clipboard anyhow.

My favorite was about my cousins'

grandmother on their mother's side that would have been my uncle's mother-in-law

and no kin to me at all, darn it. One cousin says Granny Snyder was a

midwife, another that she was a healer of all sorts of illnesses.

The story goes that whenever

a baby was born in the community too sick to survive, and the doctors

had given up, they'd bring it to Granny Snyder. She'd take the child up

to an attic room that was strictly off-limits to the family. No one ever

knew what happened there. After several days, a week, sometimes longer,

Granny Snyder would emerge, with the child healed. Granny herself would

take to her bed for as much as two weeks, utterly spent.

Years later when she died,

people from all walks of life came to her funeral. And when my cousins,

now teens, finally climbed up to the forbidden attic room, they found

mysterious powders, herbs drying in the rafters, but nothing particularly

bizarre. "What do you suppose happened in that room?" Cousin

Claire mused. "Something happened, I'm sure. Maybe it was simply

prayer, so intense that Granny Snyder herself was exhausted by it.

"Whatever it worked. They

say she never lost a single baby entrusted to her care."

Several years ago, when I first

got serious about family history, I visited Savannah to learn whether

my cousins knew any more than I did, and added some details about their

spouses. When I asked Cousin Bob's wife Maddie for her maiden name, she

hesitated, then said she was adopted and had only recently learned her

birth name. When we had a private moment, this white-haired Savannah lady,

mother of three, grandmother of five, told me her story.

She had always known she was

adopted, she said, but had never, ever sought information about her teenaged

birth mother. She stated emphatically that she had been raised in privilege,

life. A talented artist, her paintings sell in galleries all over Savannah,

and she teaches in a studio Bob built her behind their home.

Her life has been so perfect,

she wanted to do nothing that could possibly bring her parents sorrow.

But now they were dead, and almost by accident she had found out not only

her name, but that she has two half-brothers living here in Georgia. (So

as not to risk embarrassing Maddie, I've changed her identity and won't

mention her brothers' city.)

Should she contact them? she

wondered aloud. I asked her what her family thought about it, and she

said they were fully supportive. She was torn between loyalty and curiosity.

I sensed that she really wanted to do this, and encouraged her.

At the reunion this past July,

I finally had a chance to ask Maddie if she had met her brothers. Her

light blue eyes fairly burned with excitement as she answered: Yes! Yes

she had, and just last fall.

Maddie and Bob have lived in

Savannah for many years and have friends all over the state. She asked

a friend in her brothers' town if he would speak to them for her. When

told they had an older half-sister who wanted to meet them, their response

was denial. No way could their sainted mother have had a child out of

wedlock, and then surrender the baby for adoption.

The go-between was convincing,

telling them things Maddie knew about her mother that no stranger could

have known, and at last they agreed to a meeting, over the strenuous objections

of their own adult children who revered the memory of a beloved grandmother

not long dead. One daughter in particular was certain that this woman

from Savannah was an impostor who would bring heartache at best, exploitation

at worst.

Negotiations were long and

painstaking; I'll spare you the details. Suffice to say, shortly before

Thanksgiving last year, Maddie traveled to the home of one of the brothers.

Both met her there, and received her like the long-lost sister she was.

And in the back of the room, Maddie saw the nay-saying daughter turn visibly

pale and lean against a wall for support. She said it was as though her

grandmother was standing before her that familiar face, those pale blue

eyes, the halo of white hair, her mannerisms, her speech. There was no

denying who Maddie was.

At 73, for the first time in

her life, Maddie has a family of her own. And Thanksgiving is a whole

new celebration.

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