Family

I come from an enormously large family.  There are probably larger out there, but by today’s standard, my family count is pretty high.  Mom came from a family of 14 and Dad from a family of 12.  My earliest memories are of having a grand time on the two family farms, the Poff’s and the Hallsted’s, playing with lots of cousins…total number of first cousins combined between the two families….54.

So it isn’t a huge surprise that ‘family’ is very important to me.  It is the fabric of my life.  Somehow it is becoming even more important with the passing of time.  Mom and Dad are both gone now, but my extended family is ever present…even when they aren’t.  

I have cousins of whom I have no memory of never meeting.  There are cousins with whom I was very close as a child, who are now total strangers to me.  There are cousins whom I hardly knew as a child, that now I know somewhat better…and totally adore.  I have cousins who look so much like my Dad that I am startled each time I look in their face.  I have cousins spread all across the United States…most are east of the Mississippi.  And this doesn’t even take into account my brother and his sons and their sons.  

I go through cycles of intense work on the family genealogy.  The Hallsteds I have way back….they first arrived in the United States just 40 years after the Mayflower…and in England, I can trace them to the early 1400s.  

The Poffs have been tougher to trace.  But I did find a great, great, great, etc. grandfather’s grave…a stones throw from the north face of the Cumberland Gap.  That one site told me a great deal about the Poff family…immigrants from Virginia, through the Gap and northward ….who fought in the Confederacy.

I also know that both families, back through history, were farmers and educators.  Our history tells us a lot about who we are today.  Because the Hallsteds came in to the United States through New York I can be pretty certain that they were Puritans… explains a lot about the family conservatism.  And because the Poffs have an obvious history in the backwoods of Kentucky and Tennessee I can be pretty sure that they come from an Irish/Scottish heritage…there are other clues that support my notion.  

One side of my family is so closely tied together, they are like a web that is woven specifically to give us structure.  They were the village that it took to raise us all.   The other side of my family is like the Hatfields vs the McCoys…it takes so little to get them started and eons for them to forgive and forget.  

But the point about these ramblings is that Family defines who we are, whether we like it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not…family is all important to the fabric of our lives.  Cherishing our family, embracing them…even if from far away, or filled with conflict … family is life, in its richest, most affirming content.

Enough said.