I’ve always been fascinated by friends who come from large families or have a lot of extended relatives living nearby. They talk of huge Sunday dinners with aunts, uncles, cousins, and siblings all getting together at least once a month. They tell of holiday traditions that involve extended family gatherings. They have a familiarity with their relatives that allows them to seek them out at any time for almost anything. It sounds so supportive and fun.
It fascinates me because my experience is so different. I have only one sister, and though I have a lot of relatives on both sides of the family, they were and are in different regions, scattered across the U.S. and Canada. Our paths rarely, if ever, crossed. I have a number of cousins I’ve never met, and very few I’ve met more than three or four times (if my fellow blogger Ben and I ever randomly walked past each other, the only way I might be able to place him as a relative is because of his blog picture).
However, while I may have missed out on forming bonds with many family members, I grew up in a family where we had our own traditions, independent from impositions outside our small family unit. Holidays were calm and fun, and we happily celebrated in our own little family, easily incorporating new ideas or dropping old ones as we desired. As I read blogs of friends who have the extended family connections, I see that they get frustrated by expectations from both sides of the family that often conflict with their own plans and hopes. Instead of Christmas at home with mom, dad, and the kids, they feel the stress of expectations to run from family to family, as well as host their own large celebrations.
So clearly there are pros and cons to having extended family connections or not.
What pros and cons do you enjoy or struggle with in your families? Do you wish you had a more isolated family or a more integrated extended family?
Further, how do you envision family connections after we die? We say “families are foreverâ€, but those who are now your kids will (hopefully) be sealed to their own spouses doing their own thing. Time won’t be an issue, but what do you hope it will be like or not be like?
Just because a family is spread out, doesn’t mean that they can’t be close. Despite living thousands of miles away from my cousins, we had a week long family reunion every two years on my mother’s side of the family. Cousin, aunt, uncle, grandparents meant something even if you didn’t see them every week.
I know families that are closer in proximity but don’t bother getting together.
My parents, brothers and sisters all live in different states from each other, yet we get together often. I may be the only member of my family in Washington state, but I have hosted one Christmas and two Thanksgivings at my house because people came to visit us.
I am luckier than my friends around here who are also transplants–but they have a home state where “all” of the rest of their family lives. They don’t get very many visits from their family because they are “supposed” to just go home to see the clan.
I am still hoping my parents will come live near us. That would be wonderful, but if it never happens, I plan on seeing them often, as well as all my brothers and sisters and neices and nephews. I can’t imagine my children having cousins that they don’t really know or care about.
BUT, they have unknown cousins. Because my husband has 8 half brothers and sisters (both his mother and father were married before and are now divorced from each other). My husband barely sees his half-brothers and sisters. In fact, my kids just met four of their cousins for the first time on Saturday. Since we’re talking halves, its a little different. BUT, my husband does come from a family where he had full cousins but since our marriage 13 years he’s only seen one or two of them (and there have got to be 20 or so). I doubt he could even begin to name them.
Proximity is not the only thing needed to have a close extended family. And you can manage it without living close if you can travel and do so in order to see family.
JKS, you are quite right that physical proximity need not limit family closeness. In my parents’ case, finances made it impossible for my family to travel, so that definitely played a role in not getting to know my relatives.
I wonder if since your parents couldn’t afford to travel, was it also the case that other family couldn’t afford to come visit your parents?
Whenever you talk about being able to “afford” something, it comes down to what importance you place on it. I would choose food over a plane ticket or 800 miles worth of gas. But what else do I place ahead of it?
Luckily my parents can afford to come visit me. Also, I have a single brother who can afford many trips to see us so he comes often. I have a single sister who can also afford to see us when she has the time.
I also have a single sister who cannot afford to visit.
She paid to see me once, though. The day we found out what kind of cancer my husband had and I talked to her on the phone in the hospital she said she was coming. She’d been living in Alaska and was moving in a few days to New York City. She changed her flight plans to include a stop in Seattle.
She probably still is paying credit card interest on the flight change charges. I have no idea how much it cost.
But I will love her forever for telling me that day that she was coming to be with me.
I also wanted to mention that the first of my cousins died a couple of years ago. 3 out of the 6 kids in my family travelled to go to his funeral (to the state that he and his wife had lived in). The three of us who went, I think, went partly because we could manage to afford it (I had a babysitting gig that year so we had a little cash) but partly we were the three oldest, closer to his age, our three younger siblings understandably did not feel as close to him since they were younger.
Afford is a relative term. There are other things we could have done with that money. A young VERY house poor family with two little kids? It meant so much to my aunt and uncle to have us there, I think.
As I think about the past couple posts on this thread, and another, I think that one of the definitions of family is that you are a priority. Family does drop everything in time of crisis to help, or family does rearrange their life just to come visit you. That is what I expect, even with geographical challenges.
I am uncomfortable in my husband’s family of half siblings (one who appeared in 1994 after a DNA test even!) and divorces and no one communicating or getting together. A father who is more like a distant uncle, siblings who don’t share history and don’t share the present except for occasional spurts here and there.
I came from a large family where all my relatives were within a 15-mile radius (in Utah), and now I’ve married into a family that is spread across the USA (well, the world, really) with my husband and I in Houston. It is different.
In some ways, I have drawn a lot closer to my in-law relatives because they are used to being apart from each other and make more of an effort to keep in touch over the distance. When we do get together, it tends to be real quality time. Everyone takes advantage of the time together. Whereas, when I go home to my family, life goes on as normal and I am just there part of it.
I learned after the first year away to stop calling my parent’s house on Sunday night. Everyone is usually gathered there for Sunday dinner and socialization. My Dad, brother, and bro-in-laws on the X-Box; my sisters and Mom upstairs listening, singing, dancing to music, and gabbing about life in general. They try to put me on speaker phone but it doesn’t really work.
Being away has made us more independent as a couple, and we are insulated from a majority of the family drama, but it is hard to know that my children will never be as close to my parents as their cousins will be. My parents will not know my children as well as they know their other grandchildren.
All in all, I think that family relationships are what you make of them no matter the distance, but it sure would be nice to just go over to the grandparents house for Sunday dinner once in a while.
One of the blessings in my life is to have a lot of family near presently. My aunt, uncle, cousin, and her son that used to live in Michigan returned and live within walking distance. My sister and her husband just live about five blocks from me where I reside with my parents. My brother and sister live in the same city although it is further. I have another cousin and husband who lives about five blocks in another direction. I have an aunt and uncle that used to live five blocks away until the last few months. I also had an aunt and uncle who passed away who used to live a few blocks from our current home. When I was in 8th grade, I often walked by their house on the way home from school. This was especially pleasing to my aunt. During hard times, my aunt and uncle who live within walking distance often bring meals. Through the years, we have had so many fun activities with cousins getting together for birthdays, holidays, and as child piling together in a car to go to a Disney movie or Star Wars. I do not know how we all fit! All of my relation from my mom’s side lived in my city at one time though a couple are in nearby communities now and another in a different state. When my brother was married last September, he had his two male cousins from my mom’s side and one male cousin from my dad’s side as groomsmen and then my sister’s husband as his best man.
My dad’s family lived out of state but we usually got together on the farm on holidays. Then, when they moved to town we all got together there too. It was like a huge slumber party with all my cousins.
On both sides of the family, I am close in age to my cousins. I have three cousins born the same year as me. I think my oldest cousin on either side of the family is five years older than me and my youngest cousin on either side is about six year’s younger than me. My sister had two cousin’s on my mom’s side of the family born the same year.
As close as I have been to my first cousins, I lament that I scarcely know most of my parent’s first cousins. One grandpa came from a family of nine and I do not think I have met many of those first cousins of my mom. Another grandma came from a family of 14, and they are good about having family reunions so I have met a good deal of them but not enough to really feel any closeness. I have a somewhat of a relationship with one of my dad’s first cousins.
I agree that you can have a close relationship if there is a great deal of distance if you make the effort. My mom has a first-cousin who lives in Canada. I have only met her in person once. She is my only known relation that is LDS. Since meeting her, I try to talk on the phone a few times a year. It is great to have someone in the family with the Church in common. We also catch up on family news and speak of family history.
Well, I know this is rather long. Thank you for giving me time to reflect on family.
JKS, by afford, I mean it was a struggle for them to be able to afford to put food on the table. Homelessness was a real possibility for a while there. I’m serious when I say they couldn’t afford it. However, now that I’m an adult, I can afford to help them travel, and I have. In a couple weeks we’ll be going to a family reunion (we didn’t have those when I was a kid, but it’s fun to see some of my relatives now), and I’m incredibly grateful that I have been blessed with a good job that gives me the resources to be able to help my family out a tiny bit (no husband or kids, so I have more disposable income). The opportunity now to see my relatives has given me a chance to find out where my dad gets some of his weird mannerisms (my heck! his brothers do the same thing!) and to feel, just a bit, of a connection to something bigger.
As for others coming to visit our family, I think my parents’ families just didn’t really feel a great pull to keep in touch. As a result, though, my sister and I long ago vowed that we would never let years come between contacts like our parents siblings, that we would remain close. She now lives in a different state, but we still keep in close contact and remain great friends. I hope that never stops.
Audrey,
Ah, family drama… that’s something that I’ve always been isolated from because, well, we’ve been isolated ;-). Definitely a positive.
Barb,
Sounds like an awesome family!
Oh, if anybody actually read closely enough it would appear that we were at two places at once having holidays with my mom’s family and with my dad’s family. We did not go to my dad’s family for holidays always. We usually always made it for Christmas and Thanksgiving. What we would do was have a sepearte Christmas with my mom’s family on a different day. I think we sometimes had two Thanksgivings too. My grandma that lived on a farm until they retired from famiing was quite the country cook!:)
It has worked out well for my sister and her husband as well as my brother and his wife to often have holidays with us and with their in-laws as they are all in the same city. Sometimes this involves going to one and immediately going to the next while still rather stuffed. My sister’s in-laws celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve while mine celebrates on Christmas day so that works out great. Yesterday, her in-laws invited my parents to their home for a barbeque to celebrate Father’s Day. I was unvited to, but although I love my family, I get too nervous eating around other people for the last decade so I try to get out of any event that I can. But I still have managed to have a lot of good times stored up. Also, despite much anxiety, I enjoy ocassionally spending time with family. One of my cousin’s sons is like a nephew to me. He is hyperactive and may even be mildly mentally disabled to use a politcally correct term. Yet, he is very skilled at tugging at the heart strings!
JKS, I missed a part of your post:
Ah, how true. I know my parents feel this way about me and my sister, and she and I feel the same way about them and each other. Indeed, that is a wonderful definition of family. Thank you for saying that.
Tanya, yes it is an awesome family as far as the closeness we have had through the years. However, my extended family was nearly destroyed a couple of years ago with family conflicts arising over how best to care for my grandpa with dementia. We had to go to court three times to get my grandpa’s legal guardianship changed so that he could be removed from a nursing home that we felt was very unsafe due other people with dementia that had propensity to violence in his proximity. Fortunately, to our knowledge, my granpa was never harmed though his roomate was one of the more violent people there. He seemed to like my grandpa. The environment was very stark too and not stimulating. Then there were other conflicts regarding the Estate.
My mom looked up to her family member all her life and really struggled with all of this. Now I realize that things were not as black and white as I once thought and can see the other side’s view a little more.
For a long while, my mom would not even speak to that sibling. They have reconcilled some. They have spent time together and holidays. A rift is hard to heal and there are still hard feelings. Yet, we have still had the blessings of good times since the families get together again. We do not get together at one time with all of my mom’s family as her two siblings have not mended their rift. So we have good times with both of her siblings and their families, but not together.
So always be on the guard with your families. They are more valuable than any resource of this material world. Yet, feelings of bitterness can cause a terrible chasm. It is like a lifetime of love and goodness never even happened when emotions take over.
My mom has always been very careful to try not to talk behind others’ backs through the years. I think this is a large part in allowing the healing to take place. The storehouse of character really needed to be drawn upon during those turbulent months.
I know my earlier comments seemed to gloss over any problems. All families have problems. We have a lot of alcholics in the family too. However, through the rose colored glasses of childhood, we sure had a lot of fun through the years growing up. Also, amidst all of the dysfunctional families including my own, there was much emphasis on sports, extra-curricular activities, and education.
I still stand by what I said when I said that my family and extended family is a great blessing to me.
While I always treasured my close relationships with my grandparents and extended family, relationships that could only be fostered by familiarity, having them nearby when my parents divorced made a world of difference. My grandpa was pretty much my best friend in 7th and 8th grades, and one of my uncles frequently took me and my brothers golfing or camping with his sons, things that would have been impossible had we lived far away. People from church tried to help our family too, but none of them made nearly the impact our extended family did. For one thing, my mom was of course more comfortable having her dad at our house frequently than she would have been with a home teacher or any other adult male.
We live in Maryland now, but we’re planning to move back to Utah so our kids can spend lots of time with their grandparents and cousins. As many people do, especially in our modern culture, my wife and I have temporarily left close family relationships for educational and professional opportunities, but we aren’t willing to make that trade forever.
I realize that not all grandmas and grandpas are as awesome as mine, but MY life would have been much poorer had my family lived away from them so that our family could have more money.
Having just gone through what Matt mentioned they’re planning on in the future (moving from Maryland, after six years, back to Utah, where both of our families are), this particular topic is much on my mind. Ultimately, we chose to come to Utah for a job opportunity rather than a similar job in New Jersey primarily because our families are both here. But it’s an adjustment, to say the least. My wife and I met in Maryland, and both our kids were born there. To us, the roots of our immediate family, then, is separate from “the clan.” We got quite familiar with being an individual family rather than just another four people sitting down for the massive Sunday dinner (or two, in many cases). On top of this, many times our brothers and sisters and their kids just expect that we’ll join them for all their activities, since that’s how they’ve been living their lives for the past 5 or 6 years. My wife feels enormous pressure from her sister and sister-in-law to do daily playgroups, babysitting rotations, monthly “girls-night-outs,” etc.
This isn’t to say any of this is bad. There is so much that we’ve already liked in being back. For one, my younger son had only met my parents twice before our move. Now he can say “grandma” and “grandpa.” The babysitting in a pinch is also wonderful. And ultimately, when there are those times when we wanted to be with family but couldn’t, we won’t have 2200 miles of an obstacle. It’s just a matter of getting used to having people around and the expectations that come with that.
And, in a related note, I just have to say that I’ve come to despise the “pop-in,” something that we didn’t deal with much at all in MD. I don’t mind my family or my wife’s family stopping by on short notice, but they all have cell phones. Can’t they at least call first?
Tonya, some of my favorite years at BYU were when I had brothers there. One summer after I was married, we were in a ward w/Ben & Christy AND Michael’s brother and wife were very near. We had dinner together Mon-Fri and took turns cooking. It was great fun.
I’m looking forward to the family reunion in a few weeks.
Erin, I’m also looking forward to the reunion :-). That’s actually why this topic was on my mind. I can’t wait to see you and your kids!
Tanya, as I made lunch I thought again about your post. (Thanks, by the way, for giving me something to chew on — I needed a break from a business project!)
The benefits you listed of living away from family were based on the recognition that interacting with people is difficult. People get in the way of what we want, and it’s so much easier to get our way when we don’t have to deal with others! Because we believe in a social gospel (this same sociality that exists here will exist there, and all that), we know that getting our own way isn’t an end in itself, and it seems that one of the most important parts of the gospel is learning how to navigate among our families and neighbors, rather than sail the open sea where we needn’t mind other ships.
There are other arguments we can make for living apart, like the claim that we are called to serve, and the people in most need of our service aren’t necessarily our extended families (this idea is epitomized in the charge, “Go Forth!”) or that we can best establish our “independence” (scare quotes deliberate — independence is misunderstood) outside the environment in which we were raised. I think leaving Utah for six years has expanded our awareness, but while we’re still close to our families because we had strong relationships and we visit regularly (and they visit us), my kids don’t know our families the way their cousins do, and they are poorer for it.
I come from a huge family on my Mothers side (57 first cousin’s now?) that most live within 1/2 hour of each other in the Northwest. I loved having a large family and still do (though I miss them terribly living so far away now – I’m the black sheep of the family out here in NE). I always feel so blessed to be a part of such a great legacy.
Now that said, I’m also human/carnal and weak.
The only issues I deal with is the inlaw thing. I love my family, and they’re way cool, so it’s always difficult for me to spend (Christmas especially) but any holidays, with my inlaws. But as the years have gone by I’ve learned to love them and adapt because I realize that we are now all part of this giant eternal family.
So your question about “how do you envision family connections after we die?” raises some interesting thoughts. I’ve never pictured myself with my inlaws for eternity – kind of a scary thought to me because I’m still working on the relationship there. (My family is the greek family in Big Fat Greek Wedding, and his is the other – very different). But seriously, I always pictured heaven as kind of the role of grandparent – creating your own worlds, visiting all of the other kiddo’s mansions and their worlds, learning from the great minds in all parts of history etc. A giant family, but everyone with their own space. Although I miss my family being so far away, I’ve also realized why the scriptures command that we cleave unto our spouse and leave our parents – it’s better for our relationship and in some weird way actually makes my relationship with my family that much better.
Our family is sort of like Roseanne Barr’s family.
I personally envision my relatives in the Celestial Kingdom visiting me once in awhile. And because they will be perfect, they will know how once in awhile to come. Otherwise, I’m being a hermit in the next life.
When I was a kid, I pointed out how silly the whole “families are forever” concept was. So all six kids and our parents will be glued together, plus all of our spouses and our children and our spouse’s parents and brothers and sisters…..
So it was obvious that families being sealed doesn’t mean you live in the same house…or even the same planet.
The important thing to know is that you get to keep that relationship. My parents will always be my parents, even after death. I will always have my husband as my partner and we will always love our children. There aren’t many things in our mortal life that we take with us. Our minds, our souls, who we are, yes. But the only outside thing we take with us is our family relationships. And that means it is something really powerful and important.
I’ve always figured my parents won’t really be my parents in the next life. Not really authority figures, I mean. We’ll have remembered everything from the pre-existence and know so much more about who we really are then we do in this life.
Matt, well said. I agree wholeheartedly. I grew up in Northern Utah, which is where I met my husband who grew up in Las Vegas. A month before we had our first baby, we moved to Arizona for 4 years. Fortunately, we were still close neough we managed to see our families (my husbands parents are in St. George) often, but still felt like we (mostly our children) were missing out on the regular interaction that could so benefit us. At great sacrifice for my husband, he left his job and we moved back to Utah to live near our families. We’re within 5 minutes from my parents and 20 minutes from my grandparents with lots of aunts, uncles and cousins in between. In these last 3 years my children have been so enriched by being surrounded by so many wonderful people who love them.
It definitely gets to be busy sometimes, and we don’t even have both families nearby like some do, but for me, the cons are few and far between and certainly worth it.
No one could pay me enough to live in the same town as my MIL. My parents, however, my husband and I would be happy to have live next door.
I just got back home from a family “vacation”. Let’s just say that sometimes family time can be way, way overrated.
Sorry, T. 🙂