The Dawson Extended Family Site

By Emma

So.

I didn’t know this website still existed.

Actually, that’s not true. I think a part of me knew it existed in the same way I know there are probably old Claire’s earrings somewhere in a box in my childhood bedroom, or a math worksheet from 2011 folded inside a book nobody has opened since Obama was president. Technically possible. Spiritually concerning.

But I did not know it still worked.

That feels like an important distinction.

I found it because Reid and I are having a baby.

That is still a weird sentence. I’ve typed it three times and every time it looks like somebody hacked my laptop and tried to make me faint.

Reid and I are having a baby.

There. Still weird.

We found out two weeks ago, and since then I have done exactly what any normal twenty-nine-year-old woman would do, which is spend several hours researching stroller safety, cry at a commercial with a cartoon bear in it, eat a sleeve of crackers standing over the sink, and open a folder on my old external hard drive called FAMILY STUFF DO NOT DELETE.

Obviously, I clicked it.

Obviously, this was a mistake.

Inside were several hundred photos, one video of Zach falling off a scooter, three duplicate scans of Grandma Mary’s recipe cards, and a bookmark file from 2013 labeled “dawson site.”

Reader, I clicked.

And there it was.

The Dawson Extended Family Site.

Still blue. Still ugly. Still somehow using a font that looks like a substitute teacher made a newsletter during lunch. Still full of posts written by children who had absolutely no business having access to the internet.

The first thing I saw was Will’s post titled “Girls???”

I am not going to summarize it because I respect my cousin’s privacy, even though he very clearly did not respect his own in 2013. I will only say this: Kate, if you are reading this, your husband once announced his romantic interests like he was giving a weather report. Wilder, someday this will be evidence.

The next post I found was from Grandpa Frank.

Saturday:

Hello, Goodbye (4:09 PM)

By Frank

My grandmother died in the morning. Sadie and Kaitlin were born just after midnight. Grandpa wrote about both things in the same post.

I remember thinking that was normal at the time.

Maybe it was.

Maybe that’s what this family has always been. One person leaving, two people arriving, somebody needing a ride, somebody cutting gum out of somebody’s hair, somebody having a baby, somebody crying in the kitchen, somebody asking if we have more paper plates.

I was sixteen then.

Mia and I were sixteen. Zach and Timothy were sixteen. Alexa was twenty and thought she was ancient. Tyler was fifteen. Nate was thirteen. Ryan was twelve. Jasmine was ten, Hannah was nine, Laurie was eight, and Aidan was five.

Aidan is eighteen now, which should be illegal.

Sadie and Kaitlin are thirteen, which is worse.

They are the same age I was when I started writing down everyone’s business like I had been appointed family historian by a government agency.

Nobody appointed me.

I just had a Notes app and confidence.

Now Alexa has Matilda and Wells. Will has Wilder. Julianna has Truman and Madeleine. Hayley has Merrick, Vale, and Maeve. Camille and AJ had Sailor and Sutton after we all thought they were done, because apparently four S names were not enough and the alphabet had unfinished business.

And I’m going to have one too.

A baby.

A person who will someday ask who these people are.

A person who will not know Grandma Mary, except through stories and recipes and old pictures and the way Grandpa Frank still says her name like she might answer from the other room.

A person who will not understand that Mia once considered herself qualified to fix a gum-related hair emergency because we had scissors and confidence.

A person who will not know that Zach laughed so hard on a field trip that I started laughing before I even knew what happened.

A person who will not understand why the phrase “girls???” can silence an entire Thanksgiving table.

Unless we write it down.

So I guess that’s what I’m doing.

I’m not restarting the website. That sounds too official. Also I do not have the emotional strength to moderate comments from this family.

But I’m posting.

Maybe once. Maybe more than once. Maybe until somebody finds the admin password and removes me by force.

I don’t know.

I just know that today I found this ridiculous old site, and for a second I was sixteen again, sitting at the computer while the house was too loud and too full and somehow still not full enough because Grandma Mary was gone.

And then I was twenty-nine again.

And Reid was in the kitchen asking if the leftover pasta smelled weird.

And our baby, who is currently the size of something extremely disrespectful like a lentil, existed quietly inside the future.

So hi.

It’s Emma.

Thirteen years later.

We’re still here.