I spend a lot of time in a state of bewilderment, especially during the holidays when I find myself surrounded by hordes of “relatives,” many of whom are not related to me by blood or marriage. At our family gatherings, my middle sister and I tend to stand very close to the bar, clutching our wineglasses and trying to figure out who is who.
The arithmetic was easier when we were kids: we had two parents, four grandparents, five brothers and sisters, hundreds of aunts and uncles and literally thousands of cousins. This was not considered unusual in those days.
It’s different now. For example there is a very nice child who shows up at many of our family gatherings; he’s extremely polite but I’m not quite sure who his mother is. My sister assured me that I should not lose sleep over this because apparently his mother is not quite sure who his father is so it all balances nicely. As near as I can tell this child is my step-nephew-in-law, a confusing designation that I’m sure never existed a generation ago.
Of course, I confuse this child as well. He’s not the brightest bulb in the chandelier to begin with, and since my partner and I are both tall with dark hair, he can’t tell us apart, so he uses our names interchangeably.
There is another pseudo-nephew (Jared) who fascinates me because of his many parents. He has a birth father (“Dad”) that he idolizes but rarely sees. He also has a stepfather (“Mac”) who he loathes and an ex-step-father (“Pop”) that he adores. Pop was the closest thing Jared had to a father-figure, and Jared took it real hard when Pop remarried a women who was not inclined to accept her new husband’s ex-stepson into her family. There are similar tangled webs from Jared’s birth father’s various relationships. Jared has many parents but what the kid needs is a father and a mother.
These twisted familial relationships are not restricted to the younger generation. For years my Aunt Lucretia, the wife of my mother’s brother, cared for an elderly woman, Myrtle, who I assumed was her mother. As it turns out, Myrtle was Auntie’s ex-mother-in-law. Myrtle lived with Auntie and her son, who was Auntie’s second husband, and when hubby #2 died Auntie kept Myrtle until her death. What is truly odd is that Auntie and Myrtle allowed Auntie’s third and final husband to think that they really were mother and daughter, which he did until his death.
Our familial confusion is about to get worse. My nieces and nephews, who are all in their early 30’s are shedding their “starter spouses” with alarming speed. This is often a cause for jubilation of the “What took her so long to come to her senses?” variety, but the extended family keeps growing geometrically.
For example one step-nephew, who just left his wife and three children, is already engaged to someone new who has two or three children of her own. In addition, my widowed brother and sisters are beginning to date again, and these new people are bringing not only children but grandchildren along with them.
As I was muttering darkly about hordes of relatives who are not related to us, my sister asked me if I consider my partner to be part of my family since, even after almost 20 years, we are not related by blood or marriage. This made me realize that I needed to redefine “family” and do it fast, so I decided that blood and marriage may create relatives but relationships create families.