Family

When I was a kid, I had two sets of cousins—one set on my dad’s side, one on my mom’s. Except for one almost two year stint in Kansas City, we never lived anywhere close to our cousins. We were an independent little universe all of our own, floating in a great nebula of humanity.

My mother has one brother. Her extended family was pretty huge—she had all these southern aunts on one side, and tons of cousins on the other. But they all lived in the deep south, which we never did. I remember visiting there once—but all I remember were some frozen, dead wasps on a porch and coloring with Mom’s cousin joy upstairs in their church attic. Don’t ask me to explain that; I can’t.

My father came from a tiny family; on one side, he had a taciturn grandfather, a spunky grandmother and one aunt who never had kids. The grandfather had had one sister, so I guess small had become a sort of tradition with them. There was a huge family on his father’s side, but they were Catholic. Dad’s mother was not Catholic, which made for strained relations, and ultimately little interaction. But my dad, who had pretty much hated Sunday dinner at the taciturn grandfather’s house, came to like the tiny family/tiny obligation concept. And so it was passed down to us kids.

As we moved from coast to coast with points in between (Dad worked for TWA), we were pretty much all we had. Mom, Dad, three kids. I loved my cousins on my dad’s side – all boys and mostly older. But didn’t know them well. And I loved my only female cousin – from my mom’s side, but she was younger, and her brothers were SO much younger, it was like they weren’t even on the map.

So we sort of cobbled family out of friends as we went, certainly out of LDS ward friends (LDS people call their local congregations “wards”). We saw a lot of these folks, played with them, served beside them, had sleep-overs at their houses. They became like cousins – friend-cousins, friend-aunts. We had a set for every city we lived in. But when we left, we left. And the family feeling turned into names on Christmas card lists.

So when I ended up in Utah for university and met my first dyed-in-the-wool LDS from Utah people, I was pretty much bowled over by their concept of family. Not so different from the Southern way, or from the Eastern Catholic or Jewish way, I guess. But worlds apart from my own experience. You can’t tell one cousin from another without a program. People here are awash in family.

My husband came equipped with this feature: I longed to have a chart at the Arrington family Christmas party. It overwhelmed me. The faces and the names and the broad range of behaviors and beliefs and obligations.

The years went by.  And my sibs and I grew up.  And had children of our own.

Now I am the mother of four. And a grandmother.  And the mean aunt. But so many other things, too – sister, sister in law, sister-in-law-in-law, great aunt. And I am a little amazed when I step back to look at it all.

Today, we went to a funeral. A little child, the fourth in his family, who died in his sleep of a bleeding ulcer. An odd thing. A rare thing. A very sad thing. We were all devastated by it. Shaken. Shocked and deeply saddened. Broken hearted.

Chaz, in formal Kimono (which pleased Saori’s Japanese mother very much)  and G

Ask me how I am related to this child and his parents. I dare you.

As a genealogist—I don’t even know how to explain this. I harvest all these names of people who are related to people who live in counties and states through decades of time. Sometimes, immersed as I am in these families that all connect in me, I use the “find relationship” function in my genealogical program to figure out how two people are connected. I am always shocked when two people who are inextricably connected through my history turn out NOT to be related to each other AT ALL.

But that’s how it is here. Little Ken is—was—the youngest son of the beloved Saori, wife of the brother of the wife of my husband’s brother. There is no name for my relationship with her. There are no legally recognized categories for us. She is the in-law of my in-laws. And yet, she is my cousin, my sister, my niece.

The beautiful Saori and her mother and son

When we got to the funeral this morning, just before it started everyone but family was shoo-ed out of the Relief Society room (the viewing room) for a family prayer. It was then that I realized that we were not actual family here. That this baby’s grandfather, who was our pediatrician for years, in whose backyard we met a member of The Band about thirty years ago – is NOT our uncle. Or our parent. That there were thirty, forty, fifty people—in-laws branching off in-laws—in that chapel who we think of as family, who we love as family, who we serve as family – to whom it seems we are not actually related at all.

Yet another branch of the family

Cousins.  But only by law?  How strange.

It seems that it’s only love that holds us together. I wonder how many there really are? And we are tied now to our children’s partner’s families, too. And some of those people know and enjoy some of our brothers and sisters in-laws. Like some kind of wild plaid cloth, all of these families are woven together. And we like

ALMOST EVERY ONE OF THEM.

It’s kind of the way islands get made out of lava.

And add to that the neighbors we have lived with for thirty years. Or some for many less, but who are like sisters and brothers to us.

And the fact that it was my Gin who re-established the link between my god-mother aunt and my beloved cousin John and his brothers – and me.

Someone at the funeral today said, “Family is the greatest treasure of all.”

In that case, I am not afraid of financial crisis. Because I live on an island made of lava. I live in the middle of a tartan web. I am as connected to earth as Gulliver was by all those little ropes, staked to the earth. And we laugh together. And we fight. And we mourn together.

This is the laughing.

This is the mourning – cousins and cousins of cousins

It makes me dizzy. But it also keeps me from falling.

Scott and Saori, I am honored to be yours – whatever I am

So may I say to all of you—thank you. Thank you for it all. And if any of you get confused and don’t know how you’re related to somebody you could have sworn was your cousin? Ask Leslie.

She’ll know.