My thoughts of Aunt Sofie always take me back to Baker Lane where I had fond memories of many things:

Standing on top of the central air vents in the winter. Unlike most houses, hers were on the floor of the house instead of the ceiling and there was nothing like warm air blowing up your britches.

The big back yard sand pile littered with green army men and Tonka toys.  Here you could play army against the highway department all afternoon.

The huge oak tree that stood in the middle of the backyard driveway that covered what seemed like was half of the property.   Good thing there was a wall around it that we couldn’t climb over.

Camping in the back yard where I sleep walked and tried to keep the tent from falling down.    Gary and David finally got me to lay back down.

After years of swimming lessons at Kiwanis’ pool, finally learning to swim in Aunt Sofie’s pool.

It seemed like we found ourselves coming and going from Aunt Sofie’s house a lot, always bonding with the Aunt Sofie and our 1st cousins.   The funny part about us going so much was that Mom never liked driving and even more so, she never liked driving in Waco.   Somehow she could always get herself up to putting the three of us into the car and then venture into the city of Waco to visit her sister.    It was amazing how a person who feared something so much was so willing to put that fear aside to connect with her sister. 

As I grew older, I realized that this connection had been created many years before when Grandpa and Grandma Marek had started their family in West.   It was there in West that they started creating the ingredients of family with Christine, Ed, Sofie, Lois, Joseph, Mary, Johnny and Cy.       It started out with the brothers and sisters, then came the nieces and nephews, first cousins, mothers and fathers and grandparents, all growing up within a few miles of each other.

More bonding, more foundation.

Zaida and I recently converted a box of old family VHS tapes over to digital recordings and I was surprised when Zaida told me about one of the movies that she hardly recognized anyone on it.   I started watched it and quickly realized it was from Uncle Johnny and recordings of many of our family gathering, gatherings that seem so long ago now.  

There were our mothers trying to get us kids to sit still around the Christmas tree for pictures, me getting bounced on Kenneth’s knee, and who can forget those Easter egg hunts out in front of grandma and grandpa’s house.     The biggest thing I noticed  were all of those close up shots of Ed, Christine, Sofie, Lois, Mom, Johnny and Cy laughing and cutting up in the house while all of the kids were playing out in the farm yard.  

More bonding, more foundation.

For us kids, we got to enjoy a lot of family reunions at different Aunt and Uncles house’s every year, including Aunt Sofie’s.  Lots of summer visits, swimming, eating and going to the lake. But mostly, just hanging out while all of the Aunts and Uncles got together.  

More bonding, more foundation.   

Today, I can celebrate three things about Aunt Sofie:

Her own reunion with those close family members who have passed away.

Her contribution to helping create a lot of the foundation that we take for granted today when we refer to all of us as the Marek extended family.

Being there for my mother, her little sister all of those years.