Pater Familias

I often reflect on the impact my father’s family had upon me.  My father was the youngest of a very large family, all of whom came of age during World War 2.  One of his brothers, Pete, was a Marine killed in the battle of Guadalcanal.  All of his other brothers, as well as my father, wore uniforms and served in the military during the war.  If anything, the sisters were even tougher and the real steel of the family.  I can still remember walking up to one of my uncles, all full of myself for just returning from my first assignment in Germany.  The uncle, a B-17 door gunner in the war (one of the most dangerous jobs in the war), grinned at me when I regaled him of my times in Frankfurt.  For just a second I saw the iron in his eyes behind his normal jovial temperament as he said, “The last time I saw Frankfurt it was a smoking parking lot.”  Looking back, my childhood was only twenty years after the great cataclysm and here was that incredible group of brothers and sisters raising families and going about living life to its fullest – there was a sense of joy at just being together.  Some of the fondest memories of my childhood were the annual summer family reunions and the family Thanksgivings.  It always amazed me at how close this incredible family was, a closeness forged in the daunting challenges they faced in their youth.  There’s a saying in my family, “There’s something special about cousins.”  I still walk into a room with one of those cousins, maybe after years of no contact, and we pick up our relationship as if we had seen each other every day.  I think that is possible because we want to pay homage to those aunts and uncles who treated all of us a one big family.  When my parents divorced I was much more upset about the impact of my time with my father’s family than I was with my father moving out. I’ve tried to pass on that feeling of family to my own kids, dragging them to the family Thanksgiving each year.  Although it is now only a shadow of what it once was and all of the uncles and aunts are now gone.  Even a shadow of that closeness is a worthwhile immersion.