Family Tribe

Yesterday, on the first day of a new year, my dad looked at his large but still crowded kitchen and remarked with a touch of pride that they need might need a bigger house. It took a very long time for my parents to clear their house of full time residents, but that does not mean that their house is almost ever empty.

We stood around the kitchen cooking black eyed peas and pulling out leftovers from the night before, four sisters, making drinks and talking about plans. Kids wandered through on the backs of boyfriends, a chocolate lab galloped across the floor chased by my mom's ankle biter. It was a warm, loud scene, reminiscent of so many scenes before it.

Sometimes my life feels provincial. I'm a mother, living in her hometown, teaching high school. These simple facts seem like they should belong to someone else. I have always assumed that I was special, and that my life would be something altogether extraordinary. I am, after all, the product of my generation, and we are supposed to be entitled and believe ourselves to be above the mundane. But in so many ways, my life is totally and completely mundane.

I started washing dishes as people continued to eat. Laughter came from the other room. From a distance, I heard a sister complain about my dad's Pandora station just as I was singing along with Whiskeytown, lamenting their breakup so many years ago.

As I scrubbed pots and pans, I thought about the story of Mary and Martha. As Jesus visited, Mary sat at his feet while Martha worked and prepared the meal. I think about how I sometimes feel like Martha, and I wonder how this is possible. I self identify as a rather lazy person, but I am also the one to make most of the family dinners. I am usually the first one up to start cleaning dishes. Maybe I should sit longer, I think. Maybe I'm not lazy enough.

I frequently find myself in conversations with people whose lives more closely resemble the life I once imagined for myself, and they often comment of the demise of the inter-generational family in America. We talk about other cultures, which they are usually more intimately acquainted with than I am because they spent their twenties traveling, while I spent my twenties among an inter-generational American family.  We nod our heads in agreement. Large, extended families are important. The benefits to the children, the parents and the grandparents are immeasurable. I comment that I think it has been hugely beneficial to my marriage to have so many people to rely on rather than to look to a single person to fill all my needs, a single person to help me raise our children to be the kind of people we want them to be. A few nights ago, while caught up in one such conversation, a beautiful art professor remarked that our marriage was most likely a refuge from the chaos of the family and the chaos of the family was likely a refuge from our marriage. I nodded; the thought was new to me and profound.

It seems as though many people recognize that there might be something sort of lonely about each little family living in their individual little box. It seems like lots of people realize that family might be the best form of community, but sometimes they say so with the slightest hint of condensation. It's a great idea for me, but they have important things to do that have led them away from their own hometowns, have led them away from their own families. They have sought communities of like minded individuals, and sometimes I think that it most be wonderful to live among like minded individuals.

How do I explain to these professors, writers, artists, travelers that I am more than the simple mundane, happy life I lead?
Why do I think that I need to?
Why do I want to separate myself from the people they went to high school with, the people who stayed? The ones who had a bunch of children?
Because those people are might be more than their simple mundane happy lives too.

Tomorrow I will go back to my parents house. I'll help my mom prepare prime rib for my dad's birthday. My sisters and their boyfriends/ husbands will come over too. They will likely stay sitting at the dish laden dining room table longer than I will. I will find my way into the kitchen to over hear conversations from a distance while my dad's Pandora station fills in the few silent spaces.

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