Family gatherings were so easy when I was a kid. There was a direct line of descent from grandparents to aunts and uncles and then to cousins. Every now and then someone would marry, and they stayed married until one spouse died or killed the other and until then they produced more cousins. I thought of those simple times last week when my partner and I hosted a family dinner that grew to include, literally, dozens of people. The weather was perfect, the kids were well behaved and the Publix deli performed as well as it always does. By any standards the party was a success. Afterwards, I posted the pictures to my Facebook page and then I got an email from Sandy, my favorite cousin in Cleveland. “Nice pix,” wrote Sandy, “But who are all those people? Are they related to us?”
“In one way or another,” I responded vaguely, “They’re related to us, just not by blood or marriage.” I was hoping this answer would suffice. It didn’t.
“That makes no sense,” wrote Sandy. “You need to identify these people,” she said. “Who belongs to who?”
I was immediately exhausted. Providing names for the attendees was easy but trying to explain the interpersonal relationships was far more complex, because there are no simple terms to define who some of these new relatives are. The limbs of this family tree are gnarled beyond belief.
For example one of the least confusing “relatives” was that of Barbara Jane, the grown daughter of my older brother’s new girlfriend. My brother’s twins were also there with their spouses and kids; since the twins are still on their starter spouses, this branch of the family tree is pretty straightforward. My brother’s oldest daughter was also there with her girlfriend, Savannah.
“Is Savannah her girlfriend or ‘girlfriend’?” asked Sandy, via email.
“It’s her girlfriend,” I responded. “They both have boyfriends.”
“That’s no guarantee,” wrote Sandy, but then she switched gears. “Who’s the big woman who looks like a truck driver?”
“That’s Liz,” I wrote, “she IS a truck driver. She’s the ex-wife of my brother’s ex-best friend. He got custody of Liz when she and Nestor broke up.”
Next I explained that my older sister was there with her friend Peter who brought his 30 year old nephew and his nephew’s ex-girlfriend.
“Why is the ex-girlfriend here?” asked Sandy.
“They weren’t sexually compatible,” I told her, “but they’re still best friends and Sheila wanted to see the family.”
Thankfully, Sandy did not pursue this because she was riveted by the entourage with my younger brother. This was about to get confusing. My younger brother was there with his fiancée who he can’t marry because he’s not divorced yet, but then neither is she. The pretty blonde girl was his ex-ex-step-daughter who was there with her two kids, her new boyfriend and his two kids.
“Ex-ex-stepdaughter?” my cousin wrote in bewilderment. Even Miss Manners never took the family tree beyond “second cousin twice removed.”
“She’s the ex-wife of my brother’s ex-stepson,” I explained. “My brother hates his soon-to-be-ex-wife and her son, but he loves his ex-stepson’s ex-wife and her kids, so they decided that he would remain on board as a kind of honorary grandfather.”
“But what about the new boyfriend’s kids?”
“They’re delightful,” I said, and they were, but how to explain the relationship to Sandy? I decided not to try. “There’s really no good term for this relationship,” I said. “What do you call the kids of your ex-ex-step-niece-in-law’s boyfriend?” I asked.
Sandy thought a long time before she responded. “Just call them ‘extended family,’” said Sandy.
“That works,” I wrote.