It’s so nice to see
All the folks you love together
Sittin’ and talkin’ ’bout
All the things that’s been goin’ down
It’s been a long, long time
Since we had a chance to get together
Nobody knows the next time we see each other
Maybe years and years from now…
Family Reunion…got to have, a family reunion…

This classic song by the O’Jays was the soundtrack literally playing in the background throughout the past few days at our family reunion in Panama City, Florida. Allow me to paint the scene as this song is playing.

At the dining room table you had a group of elders playing cards (first Tunk and then Spades, we’ll talk about how I got dismissed from the Spades game later…). Someone mentioned that they’d also brought dominoes, and eventually later in the weekend I also saw someone break out the chess board.

Then, in the living room you’ve got some of the kids (at least the ones who weren’t outside running around), were watching TV. No one is really paying attention though because there’s so much else going on in the house. But still, I for about 30 minutes before I got caught up in a conversation with my Auntie I was able to catch some of Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Destination Wedding. I never did find out whether or not those kids got married though… I’m sure it worked itself out. At any rate, the movie was very on brand for our family. I remember coming to family gatherings when I was younger (like in the 90s) and Tyler Perry’s plays were on the TV somewhere (this was before mainstream audiences discovered him).

The real action though was taking place both in the kitchen and outside on the grill and near the deep fryers all weekend. That’s where my cousin Cory, his partner Flo, and my Auntie treated us to multiple meals a day. I’m talking shrimp and grits, eggs, bacon, sausage, and pancakes in the mornings for breakfast. And wings (lots of chicken eaters over here) and soulfood in the evenings. On Sunday afternoon we ended with my favorite, a fish fry. Man, I couldn’t get enough of it!

Outside, the dozens of kids roamed the neighborhood on bikes or played outside in the pool. At one point on Saturday I took a group of kids along with my sister and cousins and we walked the two blocks to the beach. We spent hours playing in the Gulf Coast waters, followed by some competitive games of beach volleyball. Some of my fondest childhood family reunion memories involve me meeting new cousins from across the country and staying out late into the night running around playing games. I think my daughters made those same memories this weekend with new cousins they met.

And to think, all of this came together rather spontaneously.

It was just over two months ago when I was eating dinner in Atlanta with a few of my extended family (cousins, aunties, etc). Someone mentioned that we should organize a family reunion. If you were wondering, we meant, me and my cousin Myron. We’re certainly not the elders in our family. We’re not even the oldest cousins in our generation. But we are action oriented and most importantly we both had the time and capacity to make it happen. All we needed was some help (actually, a lot of help, and thankfully it came quickly!).

Over the course of the next month, after declaring at the dinner, we’re going to make this happen, we started to organize on our extended family text chain. We researched and selected a house that could hold all of us (in all about 45 people spent some time under one roof during the weekend). My auntie, cousin, and sister stepped in (shout out to the Black women organizers) and curated the schedule, activities, and food for the weekend. I took on my favorite project: kicking us off on Friday night with a review of our family history and setting the stage for the weekend. After that was done, all we had to do was get ourselves there to enjoy the festivities.

It’s a funny thing coming together with family for extended periods of time. On the one hand, you’re reminded just how much you miss each other and need each other. On the other hand, it’s a reminder of what’s difficult about all relationships: we all get on each other’s nerves eventually. We’re all in need of grace. Our family units are the first place where we learn both how to give and receive grace. I remarked to a friend afterwards about the weekend, I was so proud of how we created the conditions for folks to feel both safe and seen in the space. Here’s how we did it.

First, we started with legacy and our common bonds. My cousin Myron, Courtney, and Aunt Serita and I along with my sister Rayyanna for years have been working on mapping our ancestry. Recently we started adding documentation from my grandma’s old photo albums, family lore, and documents like census records, draft cards, marriage certificates, etc. From all of this, we began to put the story together of who we were and how we came to be as a family. For everyone in the room Friday night (and the other half of us who weren’t there, unable to make it to this one), we traced our common lineage back to our Grandpa Samuel Dewitt Wakefield Sr. and his wife Lola Pressley Wakefield. From there we went back multiple generations into slavery across four surnames.

To make it interesting, I asked my daughters to create a Kahoot game with questions about our history (some of which even the elders didn’t know). At the end of the game, we were all laughing, and also learning a lot about some of the more wild stories. Did Great Grandma Lestia really ride up on horseback from McCormick County with Grandpa Marshall when they eloped? What’s with the recycling of all the names and where did the name Dewitt really come from? When the kids were off playing, my cousins and I asked some of the deeper questions, lore around various family traumas and wondered aloud how we might interrupt a few cycles of our own. These are the kinds of conversations that change people’s trajectories.

Speaking of changing trajectories, my next favorite thing we did was a Sunday devotional. I have to admit, I was skeptical at first, for many reasons. Most of us grew up connected to our family church or churches in our respective towns. We’ve each had our own experiences with organized religion, some good, some bad. I didn’t want to alienate anyone, and from my own experiences I’ve seen faith weaponized in unhealthy ways, particularly in family dynamics. I hoped for the best, but was prepared for it to be awkward.

However… it turned out to be a powerful experience. My favorite parts were the prayer and the vision exercise. My auntie led us in an exercise where she had the kids (and some of the adults, myself included) write down where we wanted to be in a year. She shared her testimony of writing the vision and making it plain and where it’s led her to today. My cousin did the same. Over the course of the weekend we’d seen and discussed so many models of success, it was a reoccurring theme we kept coming back to.

Then, in what quickly turned emotional and cathartic, my cousin Patricia proceeded to lead the group in prayer, family by family. As we went around laying hands and anointing each family, you could feel the love flowing from one person to another. You could also feel the softening happening in the room, especially where people who entered with hurt, pain, and unforgiveness. In many ways, it was the beginning of a healing process, one that I hope continues with honest dialogue, restitution, and reconciliation where needed. At the end of the prayers, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Even one of my younger cousins (a teenager young man) came up to me afterwards and said, it felt like we just had church. He wasn’t wrong.

So there you have it, the ingredients for a great family reunion. We reconnected. We celebrated each other. We healed together. We had a lot of fun. Oh, and we had t-shirts. I mean, is it a real reunion without t-shirts? We also took concrete steps to keep it going. We ended with a family meeting to decide our next reunion date and location, and we nominated leads for committees to help organize. Within 24 hours we’d filed paperwork for an LLC and reserved the domain name for a family trust (an idea that we generated during the family business meeting). I love that immediate action, that’s how you maintain momentum.

I can’t wait to see what these Wakefields do next.

SDW3

PS: other fun memories from the weekend…

That time when the fire department showed up because a child pulled the fire alarm and I saved that same child from drowning in the pool. Never a dull moment. Also, my uncle introduced us to this new classic during karaoke night, help me find my draws, and the dance off that occurred where everyone got involved. And about that spades tournament… see what had happened was… I just need a tutorial that’s all. People take that game so seriously lol!