Family

We all grow up with the weight of history on us.  Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies.  ~Shirley Abbott 

This week I went to the funeral of my first-cousin-once-removed. I didn't really know him well, and yet he was as familiar to me as my childhood blankie and the sound of my mother singing a lullaby -a constant in life that is both distant and ever-present at the same time. I guess you can say that family is like that. At least, it has been for me.

I grieve for today's generation, which doesn't know the comfortable embrace of extended relatives and relationships. My parents recently moved back to the small town where they grew up, fell in love, got married, and started a family. Though they had left the town before I was born, we visited at least half a dozen times per year throughout my childhood, often for a week or two each summer. Both of my grandmothers still live there, as do my parents' classmates, aunts, childhood friends, cousins, et cetera, ad infinitum, amen. I cannot tell you the name of the street that the school is on, where people go to hang out, or which neighborhood is the most affluent, but this place is in my blood - figuratively and literally. I know and am known in a way that is profound and eternal. In the Ollie Ollie Oxen Free of modern life, most people don't have a home base to go to in order to be safe. I'm glad I do.

So, there I was - surrounded by my family. In the laughter and noses and smiles of those around me I saw my grandfather, who has been dead for ten years. I heard the voice of my deceased great-uncle, whose legendary kindness and gentility were proven to be solid and true and factual by their very presence in his own children. I stood in the center of the room and the center of the generations and witnessed the past and the present and the future all sharing coleslaw and memories and genetics together. My children. My parents. My grandparents. The whispering voices of those long-departed relatives whose faces smiled up at me from the photo albums, whose life stories were being vigorously reported, sorted, and distorted. We were all there. I wanted to stand on the table, wave my hands in the air, and yell, "Hey! Everyone! Don't you get it? This is important. What we're doing here - what we are - it matters! It is everything!"

But, of course, I didn't. Partly, I didn't do so because every family needs a black sheep, and I am not anxious to move to the front of the line for that job. However, I also didn't do so because, while it's true that family is important and it matters and it's everything, it's also not true at all. Those same cousins and aunts and nephews have already gone back to their jobs and their lives, and nothing has changed. The fact that I am my grandfather's granddaughter doesn't mean a thing now that I have driven back to the home and job and town where no one knew him or all the wonder that his life encompassed. Even those who live together in that little community will cease, once again, to be family in any practical sense of the word, instead resuming their civic, societal, financial, and emotional relationships with one another.

So, there you have it. Family is at once everything and nothing, all rolled into one. I suppose that our genetic heritage and all of the other elements that make up who we are in a more philosophical / spiritual / emotional sense have similar roles. You cannot see your DNA, and probably don't often stop to think about it, but it defines you nonetheless. You are most aware of how much of it you share with others when you are in the presence of those with whom you share it most, and it makes you proud. I am forever my grandfather's granddaughter, and know that it is something special to be able to say that, even if no one else around me does. So, here's to family - including all the love handles, rogues, receding hairlines, dearly departed, and coleslaw that we share. Lowell - you will be missed, but your heritage, humor, love, gentility, et cetera, ad infinitum carry on, nonetheless. Amen.