Aunt Julia Mae Cousin’s house in Johnson City, Tenn., has been the hub of family activity on my mother’s side since many of my aunts and uncles followed her there more than three decades ago. Whether it was in the housing projects on Robinson Drive or the old houses on West Chilhowie and West Holston avenues — all within a one-mile radius — Aunt Julia Mae’s house served as headquarters.

As Big Mama’s oldest child, Aunt Julia Mae led the migration from Tuscaloosa, Ala., when she married a man from Johnson City. My Uncles Frank and Willie James “Buddy” Harris followed. So did Bertha Mae Swepson, a cousin reared by Big Mama.

After Big Mama died in 1968, everyone looked to Aunt Julia Mae to hold the family together. She is and always has been happiest when the house is teeming with relatives, food is being devoured and we’re exchanging cracks, as we always do.

Some of my fondest childhood memories have been of the summers I spent in Johnson City, in the northeast section of the state, near the Tennessee-Virginia line. Whether it was slipping out of the house to play basketball at the Carver Recreation Center with Dee Dee, Charles or Buddy Stuart, going to the nightclub with Hattie, or making the case for my younger cousins —Phil, Lynn or Robbie - to tag along on those trips to the “rec,” Aunt Julia Mae’s house was the starting point.

When I spent a recent weekend at Aunt Julia Mae’s house, three of my relatives still living in Tuscaloosa, Uncle Percy and Jesse Harris, and Aunt Katherine Foster, were there to visit their brother, Uncle Buddy, who had suffered a mild heart attack. Having just turned 55 — or, the speed limit, as Mama likes to say — I was eager to hang with my uncles and aunts, and reflect on the good times. Of the Harris clan, only Mama and Uncle Frank were missing this weekend.

Whether they were there or not, everyone has an Uncle Percy story, usually about his telling one fib or another. For my cousin Charles, who drove me to Johnson City from Washington, D.C., it was Percy coming to town for his graduation, only to not show up for the ceremony. For me, it was waiting to use Uncle Percy’s car for my high school prom. I am still waiting. No one, even my late Big Mama, was without a Percy story. We have our “good” Uncle Percy stories, too, especially about his willingness to give us money as children, but they never get mentioned.

Percy’s younger brother, Jesse, or Padna, as we called him, three years my senior, was the closest I came to having a brother. I have three younger sisters and Padna did everything a big brother would do, from teaching me to drive Uncle Percy’s car (when he was asleep) to taking me to the basketball court. When I was more interested in playing football in high school, Padna, an All-State basketball player, would even rag me about the advantages of running up and down the floor in a warm gym over getting knocked to the ground by largest guys on the other team. Now that former athlete has emphysema and carries around an oxygen tank. Even so, he still won’t quit smoking, which drives all of us up a wall.

This particular weekend was a good one from my Aunt Kat. She has Alzheimer’s and when she recognizes me, I consider that a major accomplishment. One time, she sat through a speech I had delivered at Elizabeth Baptist Church in Tuscaloosa. Five minutes later, she was asking me what I was doing in town. But this time, she remembered; she was playful and affectionate, like she was in the earlier years.

Aunt Julia Mae is still the boss. She pretends to be the tough boss, while cooking enough food for an army and ordering us to feed our face. She is 85 and, ironically, moves around better than Uncle Percy or Padna.

Father Time has slowly taken his toll on my family and it’s not an easy thing to witness. The same house that holds so many fond memories now holds a different set of recollections, reminders that my uncles and aunts are getting old. They move more slowly, they are beset by different health problems and hardest of all, I must face up to the reality that they are not going to always be around.

I took pictures of each of them on my recent trip to Johnson City. They’ve provided the younger family members with so much love, wisdom and laughter that I want to hold on to them and those memories for as long as I can. They, like Mama, are all Big Mama’s children and a piece of each of them lives inside of me.