Do Your Family Members Know Each Other?

Another Way for week of August 18, 2023

Do Your Family Members Know Each Other?

For some families, August is a great month of family get togethers or reunions including trips across many miles to reunite.

But sadly, for many of us, family gatherings have fallen by the wayside. This is natural in some respects, due to families living at long distances from each other. Travel can be costly, jobs take priority, and two-year-olds don’t travel well.

Plus as the older generation dies, there have to be new generations to do the work of organizing and getting folks together. Some families are better at staying connected than others. Some don’t care about gatherings for various reasons. Past hurt feelings. Brothers who rub each other the wrong way. Sisters who gossip and critique too much, maybe.

J.D. Vance, who wrote Hillbilly Elegy: Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis (2016) says how the first eleven or so years of his life, he had seen his extended family members during happy times: “family reunions, holidays, or lazy summers and long weekends.” In recent years, “He saw them only at funerals.”

I’ve heard many other families express this truth and frustration. I was tickled that my husband and one of his cousins took the initiative fifteen or so years back to organize their remaining family for some reunions while their last aunt was still living.

We met in different states including North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland. Even though these were not my blood relatives, I enjoyed the “organizer” roll with my husband, who did the telephoning and connecting as his cousins found locations to meet. Earlier we had gone to a larger family reunion in Alabama and this launched several years of our putting on paper some of his father’s family history. But as we all get older, travel across states becomes more difficult and uncertain. 

Still, I think family get togethers are important if they can be managed and attended. They may take on a different flavor and happen in a smaller setting at a restaurant instead of a local church or park, but getting together in whatever ways we can manage are worthwhile for the glue they provide families and even the larger civilization.   

I’m grateful my husband’s mother’s extended family had been getting together for years–some 100 strong on his mother’s side. A smaller variation of that with our “Hottinger and Sonifrank” relatives helped our children know many of their second cousins by face and name. Then last year, one cousin and his wife took the initiative to plan and host a potluck picnic at his father’s longtime farm (father now deceased) for our particular branch of the family tree. We’re looking forward to another get together there in September.

Why are family get togethers important? For most of us: connections, history, laughter, ties, support. Even if you go only for the meal–usually a sumptuous potluck spread that is a treat in itself–it is a gift to your older relatives who gather to be able to meet the newest members of the clan (babies, little ones, spouses) and help us feel bonds and a shared history.

Two psychology professors, Shoba Sreenivasan and Linda Weinberger wrote in Psychology Today (online) reminding us: “Generally, reunions can be highly valuable to our well-being. For those who want to learn more about themselves and make stronger connections with others, reunions can be a powerful vehicle for accomplishing this.” Reunions also build on and “celebrate the meaning of family by sharing memories and family rituals as well as encouraging a sense of belonging to something greater than your nuclear family.”

If you are wishing your family would get together more, perhaps test the waters with a sibling or cousin or two, try some possible dates or locations, and you may be surprised at the feel-good stuff that results. Unless you have a family that simply does not get along, staying in touch with family members will likely help build stronger bonds and memories for you and your children.  

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I would love to hear your reunion stories and memories! Here’s a rundown I shared last year in September.

Maybe it’s time for a sibling trip? A cousin get together?

Comment here–you may help someone else be inspired to get the clan together! Or write to Another Way, P.O. Box 363, Singers Glen, VA 22834, or email anotherwaymedia@yahoo.com.

Another Way is a column by Melodie Davis, in syndication since 1987. She is the author of ten books, most recently Memoir of an Unimagined Career. Another Way columns are posted at FindingHarmonyBlog.com a week after newspaper publication.