Kith & Kin

Cousins on a summer day at the grandparents ’  house. My brother Keith is on the far left, and our cousin Scott is next to him. I ’ m next, standing with my arm around Scott. Loren is the tall kid in the middle with the New Mexico T-shirt on, and his sister Robin is right beside him. I never told anybody this before, but I had a crush on Robin — I think you can see why! I recently received a text from my brother Eric: “Just got word from cousin Robin that Aunt Karon died on June 1.” That was only three days ago. She was 86 years old. Aunt Karon was the fourth child born to my grandfather Weston Skaggs . Born in 1937, she was the family’s only girl. Her older half-brothers were Leo, Eddie, and my dad, Nyle. Weston’s first wife, Eva, passed away fifteen days after my dad was born; Grandpa remarried, and he and his second wife—we called her Buddy —had just one child, Audris Karon. Dad was born in 1936, so he and Karon were close in age. But I never heard him talk about their ch...

It seems that as I was growing up Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners were always held either at Grandma Swartz’s or Great-Aunt Mildred’s. That makes sense, since for years they were the matriarchs of our extended family—they were sisters and the last members of that older generation. I loved them both dearly. I was closer to my grandmother, of course, not only because she was Grandma but also because she lived in our town. Great-Aunt Mildred was Grandma’s elder sister, and she lived about forty-five minutes away in Ashland. (I shall refer to her hereafter as “Aunt Mildred,” which is what we called her—and by the way, in our family it’s pronounced “ant”; none of that hoity-toity “ahnt” stuff for us!) I never knew her husband, Uncle Herschel. He passed away in 1963, two years after I was born. Uncle Herschel and Aunt Mildred had one son, Andy. “Andy” was his given name, and for a long time I thought he had no middle name. His grave marker, dated 1940–1994, has only the name “Andy” on...