This was the first time that all my siblings and I had gathered under the same roof for 10 years, which is when we celebrated number 50. My oldest brother, Al, and his wife, Marilynn, flew in from Littleton, Colorado for the event. My only sister, Joan, and her husband, Tim, came from Fort Collins, Colorado. I stayed at the house of my brother, Ken, and his wife, Carolyn. It is about a mile from the house of the remaining brother, Bob, and his wife, Terry. Mom and Dad drove in from Tucson, Arizona in a small motor home which they parked in my brother�s driveway and is where they sleep.

On Friday night, Ken and Carolyn hosted a party for friends and relatives. We were a bit fraught during the day. Carolyn had come down with a bad cold, that turned into bronchitis, and so we all pitched in to do last minute shopping, picking up tables and chairs, and preparing the dishes for the party. What with family and friends, about 50 people showed up.

For me it brought back so many memories, some of which were linked to acute feelings of embarrassment. You see, about 20 years ago, I had become so fed up with Indiana that I moved away. In 1980, I went to Algeria, then to Italy for two years. From there I moved to Lafayette, Louisiana, to Tallahassee, Florida, and finally to my home in Maryland, where I have lived for the past 15 years. For a long time I did not keep in very good touch, and so I missed important family events like births, deaths and most importantly the maturation of nieces and nephews. What hurts the worst, however, is to see how my own aunts and uncles have grown old.

When you live around family, the effects of aging happen gradually. When you don�t see someone for 20 years, you carry around a mental image of the person that no longer represents reality. It'� like watching a time-lapse film. It also brings you face to face with your own mortality. If they aged that much in 20 years, how different do I look to them?

At the party on Friday, my mother�s three remaining sisters, Florence, Marty and Gabriella showed up along with her brother, Walt. They range in age from their early seventies to their mid eighties. My aunt Marty worked at the library and was always very fond of me. She had a son my age, who didn�t go to college, and when I was away at school she used to send me books, greeting cards and cartoons. She never signed her name, but instead used the nom de plume of �Marmaduke.� Whenever I saw her and thanked her, she denied sending them. This weekend she confessed and said she had sent them. She�d gotten the name from a dog in the eponymous cartoon strip, �Marmaduke.� Aunt Marty joked about how she�s gotten older and has started shrinking, but her mind was a sharp as a tack. She gave my wife, who is English, a first edition biography of Queen Elizabeth and her sister Margaret, written before the former�s coronation. �I thought you might like this, being English� she said. When Judy opened the book, we found a first day of issue postcard with the stamp that honored the queen�s coronation. What a sweet thing for her to do.

I also enjoyed seeing my Aunt Florence, who I hadn�t seen for over 20 years. She lived near St. Joe River, and her husband, Uncle Lindy had died two months earlier after a long bout with Alzheimer�s disease. She had managed to keep a steady course through it all, and she even retained a wry sense of humor that I remembered. Her generation grew up during the depression, and since we come from peasant stock, everyone grew their own fruit and vegetables and made their own wine. The latter was made from concord grapes and was usually sweetened. When my aunt Flo arrived, I asked her if she would like a glass of wine. She said she�d take a glass of red. I went over and poured her a glass of Merlot and handed it to her. She took one sip and said, �Ugh! Drano!� and handed it back to me.

The folks who live behind my brother, Ken, hail from Korea. They have a daughter the same age as Ken�s daughter and those two were best friends in high school. The Cho�s stopped by with a platter of fresh shrimp and a bowl of dried and salted strips of squid. They invited all of us over for dinner on Sunday morning. Mr. Cho is a successful businessman and lives in one of the biggest of the newer houses on the block. He loves to garden and has created a mini-paradise in his back yard with a riot of flowers, fruit trees, bird feeders and even a pond he built for himself. Afterwards, my sister-in-law told me that most of the neighbors avoided the Cho�s. Though, virtually everyone in the US is an immigrant, few of the ones who�ve been here for just a generation or two take kindly to the new ones. Indiana is a particularly conservative state to boot. Oh well, it�s their own loss.

I had the unexpected pleasure of seeing an old couple, who at one time had been very close friends of our family-Rudy and Jackie Prikosovich. Jackie was the daughter of my grandfather�s best friend. She and my father were like cousins. She developed polio at a very young age and has been confined to a wheel chair her whole life. She married Rudy, who used to work at my favorite store when I was a kid-Bob�s Hobby Shop. My brother Ken and I used to go there to race our slot cars. On visits to their house, Jackie used to show us her paintings, which she would do while holding the brush in her mouth since her hands did not work. Jackie was particularly interested in hearing about our travels and Judy�s English background. She told us that she and Rudy had gone to Yugoslavia five years ago to see our lady of Medjegorie. She spoke with the joy and enthusiasm of a completely happy soul, and it touched me when she asked if she could give a little gift to me and my wife-medals of the virgin Mary that she had had taken with her and gotten blessed at Medjegorie. She told us that the one girl who had seen the virgin takes the medals with her when she sees the apparition of Mary, who then blesses them. Jackie�s serenity despite a lifetime of suffering made me stop a bit and realize just what an easy existence I have had.

It was very nice to see my sister and her husband, Tim. I�ve written earlier this year about how I used to sneak into her room and listen to music. She ended up marrying Tim, who dreamed of being a musician. It�s taken a while, but he�s become a very well-respected singer/songwriter in their home of Fort Collins. His band was voted best new act at the New Orleans Jazz Fest this year. Tim has always been such a laid-back guy, who was always a kind of big brother to me when my own were off at college. He was very athletic and was a big sports fan. He used to insist on giving me a firm handshake, and when I would squeeze back he would turn it into a little contest of who was stronger. My European relatives always gave hugs, which is not really the American way. And I realize now that a handshake is the sublimated version of a hug and appreciate Time teaching me that.

The best thing about Tim and Joan was that they always treated me like a valued member of the family-and as an equal. They have two great kids, Danielle and Spencer. When Danielle was born, they honored me by asking if I would be here god father. Once in the summer of 1976, Joan asked me if I could baby sit on short notice for my niece and nephew. I took along my friend from the French House, Thom Klem, and when we got there Joan had cooked chicken cordon bleu for us and Tim had bought us a bottle of good white wine (he had once been a wine salesman.) As they were leaving, Joan turned to me and said �Oh by the way, Spencer has diarrhea!� And so I learned how to change diapers that night. But that was OK-it prepared me for when I had kids of my own. Thom and I got drunk on the wine and then stayed up late watching an old movies from the 40s or 50s which was based on the Russian short story, �Queen of Hearts.� It was superb and the evening still has a special place in my old brain box of memories.

I link today�s piece to my niece, Danielle. I�m not sure if it was that summer or one before, but the symphony came with a copy of the Ninth Symphony that I bought at the mall while shopping for a birthday present for my niece. This symphony tends to get overshadowed by the Seventh and Ninth symphonies. It is shorter, and on the whole, happier in tone than either of those two. In a way it has a kind of efficiency about it-the theme of each movement seems to jump from Beethoven�s mind directly. It completely lacks the long slow development of theme found in the Ninth Symphony. Indeed, that makes me think of it more in the strict classical tradition of Mozart�s symphony. Maybe it was Beethoven�s last demonstration of his mastery of that style before launching off in the convention-shattering direction of his later works.

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