Extended Family?

When I was a very little boy, my parents decided to load up the car with all of our worldly possessions and move to a small town 100 miles south of Atlanta. This doesn’t sound like a big deal today; people regularly move around the globe and some even commute this distance to work every day. But when you understand that they had three little boys under 8 years old, hardly any money and it was the late 1960s, well it sounds a lot different to me.

I have to add that I don’t mean to paint a picture of dusty trails and indian attacks, but the deep south (away from Atlanta) was, to shine it up somewhat, a budding society; a diamond in the rough. I think the initial move was made somewhat smoother for us since my father was the minister of a small church, but when you inherit grown “family” members you never really know what you are getting. It’s kind of like adopting a grown dog from the pound and you often have to guess at what baggage they lug around. Oh, and hope they don’t bite you. It can take a lifetime to understand and accept each other’s habits.

But we were a long way from our real family and our contact with them was limited. This distance was compounded by the old Volkswagen bus we drove; a lesson of living in a rural area is that you are only as good as the car you drive. As young as I was, I still recognized the pained look on my grandparent’s faces when they came to visit. The look of “when are you going to stop this madness and come back home where you belong” is impossible to disguise even from a very young child, and as a parent now, I feel sure I could dish out a pretty good dose of it myself! But we dug in even harder after these visits.

Well all of this was put in motion a long time ago, and though we moved around some, we never left this little town; it had become my home and it is now my daughter’s home. We had no real family here other than those living under the same roof, and the three little boys never really knew any other way. I was sometimes envious of those who were related to half of the school; they had automatic bodyguards and confidants, but it wasn’t something I thought much about. We saw extended family at Christmas holiday parties and though I was always glad to see them, I was just as happy to get back home.

I think of this today as I think about the reunion I had with my extended family this past weekend. I think of the way that I thought of my brother when I saw my cousin scratch his head; the way I thought of my father when my uncle told a joke. I saw female versions of that man that smiles at me every morning in the mirror and I saw the things I love most about my daughter in other faces. I saw a connection that can never be broken by time and distance.  I saw myself.