I like my coffee strong and my men stronger. —Aunt Katie
I had planned to get at least a little sleep before waking at 3 AM Saturday to meet with my sister and brother-in-law for the dawn flight from Pittsburgh to Chicago and then an immediate connecting flight to Omaha. We had no time to spare. After landing in Omaha, we rented a car for the nearly 2-hour drive to the middle of nowhere—the longest leg of our journey. My sister has a thing about rented cars. It has to smell right. If it doesn’t smell right, she won’t ride in it. Know anybody else like that?
The celebration of my dad’s sister Katie’s 100th birthday was at a church on a Saturday afternoon in Norfolk, Nebraska. I had prepared to dress like it was the Roaring Twenties as was encouraged by her postcard invitation. She requested no gifts. Birthday cards were welcomed. I wanted to meet Aunt Katie’s wishes and succeeded in learning how to tie a bow tie, practicing in the mirror for weeks before the once-in-a lifetime event.
I hadn't traveled seriously in over 10 years, not since flying to meet my future wife in Appomattox in 2013. Traveling can be exhausting, but the freedom to do so in the United States is an amazing privilege. I don’t travel much; I'm more rooted in Pittsburgh, where I’ve lived since the 1980s after graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. For me, life has been more about finding a place to land than hopping from one adventure to the next. But this trip was different—a chance to connect with family and celebrate Aunt Katie, the last of my dad's immediate Moyer family. Dad died in 2001.
The airline flights and drive to the party at a church in the heartland of the heartland were relatively quick and easy. It was heartwarming to see how all of her local family had worked together to make Aunt Katie's 100th birthday celebration an extraordinary occasion.
The open, endless Nebraska skyline felt like a fitting backdrop for Aunt Katie’s life—a life rooted in simplicity and endurance, much like the rolling green fields and towering white windmills. Growing up in Pittsburgh, I was used to being surrounded by hills, not endless horizons.
Sunday morning after the party, Aunt Katie showed us something special. Her “happy box” was a small treasure chest of life’s simple joys: buttons, pressed flowers, and locks of hair. To anyone else, they were trinkets. To Aunt Katie, they were reminders of love. Whenever she feels sad, which everyone feels now and then, she looks through her happy box. Today, she collected locks of hair from a few of her great-grandchildren who were willing. Some weren’t, for fear of losing a piece of themselves.
Aunt Katie, moved from Altoona, PA to Norfolk, NE, in a whirlwind with her new husband just after WWII. A Navy veteran and sturdy farmer, he died about 30 years ago. She got the idea for her “happy box” from reading Laura Ingalls Wilder during the Great Depression. She plays with her great-grandchildren, cooks, and cleans, and gets around the house just fine but needs her cane if she goes out. She doesn't drive anymore and relies on family for transportation. She prefers that they don’t go out of their way for her, even though they would.
She has no major health problems at the age of one hundred. Though she uses a magnifying glass to read, and to decipher crossword puzzles, and her hearing is poor, she can hold one-on-one conversations fairly well. No signs of dementia. She doesn't tolerate foul language. She’s a little stubborn at times. She welcomes hugs. She’s generous. She will give away any money she doesn’t need to others who truly need it. She’s not a hoarder. She said the church used to help people. Church used to mean a kind and loving community; we take that for granted these days. Another cousin mentioned that you don’t give someone money and expect to get it back.
More random items and things I learned on my trip to Nebraska:
Yes. Nebraska looks like that iconic default wallpaper for Windows XP called Bliss. At least the parts of it I saw that weekend.
The largest airport in Omaha, Eppley Airfield, oddly sits closer to Iowa, nestled between an oxbow lake and the Missouri River northeast of the city. As we traveled, I couldn’t help but think about the lay of the land — the archaeology and geology— the layers of history beneath the roads and runways. Long before this land became an airfield, it was part of the migratory route of the Omaha people. In the late 17th century, they were pushed westward from the Ohio River basin, where Pittsburgh now stands, by the Iroquois Confederacy. The Iroquois dominated a massive region that stretched from Western Pennsylvania and the Allegheny Mountains across the plains, a reminder that this heartland holds centuries of meaningful stories far older than highways and airports.
As socializing goes, I’m not great at it, but not anti-social. My sister can talk to several different cousins she hardly knows all at once endlessly for hours. I’m more of a fifty-minute one-on-one depth person —an individual psychotherapist, not a group facilitator. I’m pro-solitude.
Stories fly fast and furious when you have nearly 200 of your closest relatives gathered in one space. Aunt Katie can name about half of them off the top of her head. I get headaches trying to remember who is related to whom. You try to make pleasant conversation while eddies of a thousand other bits and pieces of conversation are swirling around you like a wind that kicks up in Nebraska.
Our families seem to like to blend and mend and/or vice versa. They believe in grafting, having adopted many homeless children who come from families who, for various reasons, were unable to support them. We come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. In a family where branches are grafted and mended, Aunt Katie, like my dad, has been a steady trunk—offering strength to those who needed it, who can accept it, with a kindness that radiated to the next generations.
One older cousin described how he climbed a mountain with his sons in a few days out West recently, training several months before. Everyone on that expedition, most half his age or less, supported each other. If one noticed another climber in the group was struggling, they’d kindly offer to carry one piece of gear or another. He also said you can learn to do anything you want to do.
Not everyone is supportive. I’m not always. Some aren’t capable. When people hustle through airports to get to connecting flights, they have little time for pleasantries. Through the stampede in the Chicago terminal, I heard one woman call over to her friend in the crowd: “We’re not in Montana anymore!”
While disembarking one flight, a passenger didn’t want to wait his turn. Words were exchanged. Both men let it go and walked away. I’m grateful a fistfight didn’t break out. Safety is important even after the airliner has landed. Kindness is not an option. It’s essential.
Oh, and Aunt Katie complimented me on my vintage-inspired straw boater hat and asked me if I owned a boat. No, I told her. But maybe I should.
That’s me in the sunglasses.
💞 thanks for sharing this momentous time in Aunt Katie’s life.
Here's to aunt Katie. What a lady. Thanks for sharing this J.E! Hope you're well this week? Cheers, -Thalia