A few blogs back I wrote about the problems of dealing with a family owned and operated business. Nepotism is not really a good business quality.
At that time I decided to write about how a family works. I would estimate that less than half of Americans are part of anything resembling a ‘family’.
Unfortunately making up my mind to write about family hasn’t been helpful to me. I am nearly 4 score years old, have siblings and children and grandchildren. The family gets together every Thanksgiving. Family is mostly focused on grandchildren and the lineal bloodlines that extend to those grandchildren. Altogether there are 22 family members who come to Thanksgiving wherever it is held.
Every year I consider it a miracle that we get together. I have no idea what holds a family together. I know it is important to the grandchildren to be part of a family. And I know that I am happy to be part of a family. On occasion my siblings and all our children are together; although college is breaking up the older part of ‘children and grandchildren’ categories.
I am always delighted to see how happy, calm and cooperative everyone is. But I have no idea how a family works. I know that everyone consciously avoids divisive topics and succeeds at that. That no one complains about anything, like food, like someone else’s behavior. There are no cliques and no conspiracies.
But I’ll be damned if I know why a family works.