The Lynchpin

I love a party.

I know. You’ve just read that line twice and scratched your head. It doesn’t sound possible, does it? You know me as a socially awkward person, who likes quiet, reading books and doesn’t drink. I might stalk a party like an interested social anthropologist, looking totally out of my comfort zone but I love them. There’s nothing I like more in life than seeing people enjoying themselves. Whenever I saw my Dad he would always say, “Tell me something nice,” and I think it’s my version of that. It’s possible that the world divides into two (probably 48/52) between people who thrive knowing that others are more happy/unhappy than them. Hearing about or seeing other people’s joy makes me happy.

If you are part of a large family you probably only see each other at weddings and funerals or hatches, matches and dispatches, if you include cooing over new babies. This makes sense in our busy lives as you don’t always have much in common with Great-Uncle-Paul-Twice-Removed but it’s probably a mistake.

On Saturday, I was invited to a party by my cousin. It was wonderful. She has a lovely house at the end of a country lane, a bunch of really great friends and a very generous husband, who loves to host. At any party, people tend to stay within their social groups (oh, gosh, I’m never getting invited to a party again, am I?) and this party was no exception. There were the florists (who would have guessed that florists were so loud?), the police (This is X, we were friends on the riot squad), the Irish contingent (I can’t tell you what they said because of the very thick accents that got thicker as they consumed ever more impressive amounts of alcohol, while still standing), the husband’s friends  (“I’ve known  him for thirty years”) and the family.  In the family group with me were the Long  Suffering Husband,  my sister, another cousin, her husband, daughter and daughter’s fiancé. This isn’t a very impressive number considering that there twenty two cousins on my Dad’s side of the family and so I feel even more privileged to have been invited.
“Do you ever look at all of us and wonder how we are related?” my cousin asked.
“The opposite,” I said. “Weirdly, I see a lot of similarities. Just look at how we can talk to anyone.”

My other cousin’s daughter reminded me of my own daughter, except with a larger vocabulary of swear words and it made me wonder how much of personality is actually genetic. I had always thought it was nurture but such similarities with no shared experiences growing up makes me question that. The last time I saw this woman, she was a teenager with pink dip-dyed hair and my daughter pointed at her from across the room and wanted to be as cool as that. Unfortunately, I’d forgotten that this, the only time our two daughters had met, was actually at my Uncle’s funeral and so what I’d hoped would be a funny/happy reminiscence brought on tears.

If you are part of a big family there will always be this discussion at the end.
“It’s been really nice to see you again.”
“Yes, it’s funny how we get on so well, even though we hardly ever see each other.”
“We should get together more often.”
“Yes, it used to be weddings and funerals. Now it only seems to be funerals.”
“And there’s been too many of them, lately.”
“We should get together more often.”
You all agree and then you don’t see anyone until the next funeral.

Sometimes, you are really lucky and there is someone who keeps everyone together. My Dad used to try. As the baby of the family, he kept in touch with everyone. Even the Russian spy would answer the phone to him. He arranged occasional meals and parties that lots of people managed to come to and when he was dying he was concerned enough about his role of keeping everyone in touch to ask me to start a messenger group to let everyone know he was stepping down from the role. Kindly, he didn’t ask either me or my sister to step up.

At the end of Mum’s funeral, we were having the usual cousins conversation when one said, “I know! I can do it. I have a house in the country. I can have BBQs and invite you. I can keep everyone together. I can be the lynchpin”

Thank you, Lynchpin, I had a wonderful time at your party.