Big Cousin Pee Wee

This weekend my family celebrated the life of Willie Carson affectionately known as Pee Wee.

In thinking about our family, we have big cousins and little cousins, my generation is kind of in the middle. Pee Wee was a BIG cousin, the biggest. The irony of his nickname is not lost on us. Grandma gave it to him long before he joined the freshman wrestling team at ETHS. I’m not sure what weight he wrestled, but looking at that yearbook picture, I would guess he was definitely south of 110.

Pee Wee was the first, the first of the first cousins. Not many families can say this, but we are 40-plus strong. Forty first cousins. That’s not a family, that’s almost a small town. You needed a head count, folding chairs, and a system for whose turn it was to sit at the kids’ table.

First cousins are really our first built-in friends. Close enough to feel like brothers and sisters, but just far enough away that when trouble started at grandma’s house, you could sometimes blame each other and survive.

First cousins are like neighboring houses built on the same family land. Different addresses, different rules, different lives, but the same people running back and forth through the yards for a lifetime.

And today, we are one less.

Pee Wee was already a grown man by the time most of us were beginning to understand the full value and power of family. He was more like that tenth uncle. In fact, most of our kids called him Uncle Pee Wee anyway.

When he pulled up to family gatherings in his blue Duster, the boys were in awe long before the Dukes of Hazzard had the General Lee. That car might as well have been a spaceship pulling onto the block. Pee Wee was cool before some of us even knew what cool was supposed to look like.

He was allowed to sit with the adults while we played in the yard, chased each other through the house on Sherman, or ran up and down the streets playing freeze tag. And back then, sitting with the adults meant something. You had reached a level.

By the time we got to adulthood ourselves, Pee Wee was almost always there for family events. We were initiated into big cousin status by the stories he knew about our parents and his firsthand recollections of growing up with them. His ability to weave a story was on par with Uncle Bill and Uncle Victor. And like all great storytellers in this family, some of the details may have gotten a little better over time.

His sentences always ended with, “…and stuff.”

The best times were Christmas Eves, when the kids, the next generation, the second cousins, participated in the grab bag. Uncle Pee Wee made sure he had gifts and gift cards for every kid, quietly showing what family meant to him. That was his way. He showed love by showing up.

So now I imagine him sitting around the table with the ancestors who went on before him, telling stories that make Uncle Bill laugh, Aunt Queen pinch Uncle Monk, Uncle Vic waiting to add his take on it, and Uncle Richard already getting ready to do his impersonation of him the second you finish talking. The rest of the ancestral family smiling those Wallace family smiles that let him know he’s are home.

And stuff.

Pee Wee today we honor you, but more importantly to thank you, for being our BIG cousin, for being part of the foundation of this family, and for showing us what it really means to stay connected to the people who share your roots.

And stuff.