Families are complicated things. They say that you can choose your friends but not your family but you can choose how much contact you have with your family. My sister and I were not the best of friends growing up but now that we don't see very much of each other we get on quite well and she is the best Auntie my kids could ask for. I think every child needs an irresponsible adult in their lives, one who will let them take a sip of their beer, or suck the helium out of a balloon to sing like Donald Duck but who cares enough about them to make sure they stay safe.
Both my parents are from large families. My Dad was the youngest of eight children and today was a chance for them to meet up. His oldest sister has recently passed away and despite living in New Zealand they had remained in quite close contact by phone and letter. Her daughter is visiting with her husband and so Dad arranged a family reunion. Even though only half of the siblings are still alive, there could have been a large number of people there as there are now children, grandchildren and even a few great grandchildren. The turnout was a little disappointing for Dad but the people who were there were lovely. I found it very interesting to be in a room full of people who all seemed to share the same nose. Obviously, I don't mean there was one nose between everyone, just that everyone had the same shaped nose.
Recently, I came across a novelty song from 1948 by Dwight Latham called 'I'm my own Grandpa'. This is possible if he married a widow, whose daughter then married his father.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Y-Q9EM0G9I
Although, my family is large it isn't quite as complicated as that but I still struggled to work out the relationship of some of the people in the room. I'm really not a very sociable person. I like to watch what is going on rather than dive in and make conversation. Having written out my family tree I was able to work out some of the connections just from overhearing names but I'm very unsure of the correct terms. For example, the very pretty girls sitting at the end of the room are my cousin's children but does that make them my second cousins or my first cousins once removed? And what relationship do they have to my children?
The interesting part of the TV program 'Who do you think you are?' is not working out these connections but the stories behind the family. I wonder if the experiences of your grandparents can be genetically inherited. On these programs you often find that people whose great grandmothers had been strong single parents then go on to be strong single parents, or the celebrities who are great business people come from a long line of great business people.
The stories I heard being told today all seemed quite sad. They were stories of poverty, hunger and war. My grandfather was a very interesting, canny man. He had been in the army between the wars and had managed to get himself discharged a short while before the second world war began and joined the London Fire Brigade. I hope I'm not doing him a disservice when I say that I think he must have known the war was coming and must have known that the Fire Service was a protected occupation, so that he would avoid being called upon to actually fight. I'm not saying he was a coward, far from it. I think it takes enormous strength of character to chose to stay at home to look after your own family first. After his daughter was evacuated he decided to move the whole family to Langdon Hills so they could be together again. He continued to work in London and walked back every evening from the end of the London Underground line at Upminster across the marshes (a distance of at least 10 miles). When I knew him he was able to pass as Santa Claus, without the need for a fake beard or padding and he loved to tell a story.
My grandmother, worked a lot and the children had to fend for themselves, with the older siblings being responsible for the younger ones. My Aunt, still hasn't really forgiven my dad for the day he was born because on that day they all had to climb in and out through a really small window because he was causing the front room to be 'out of bounds'. They talked of hunger, pinch pudding day and getting a banana (after chopping off the top of a finger) and being told off for not liking it (because banana skins don't taste nice - no matter how hungry you are).
I'm not sure if any of these histories have impacted on my life but they are great stories that my Grandfather would have told, with some embellishments.
