Tribe

“We need to be there early,” I insist, “my family gathers.”  The dynamics make little sense to someone new, but he soon experiences the phenomenon himself when we arrive late by family standards, which in reality is a full twenty minutes before mass on this Wednesday morning, to a lobby teeming with the chattering members of my clan.

 

I am a child of the sixties and seventies, an era when adults laid down their roots in relative proximity to their own childhood homes, kids outnumbered the bedrooms in the house, moms mostly stayed at home, heading upstairs to apply a bit of lipstick and rouge in anticipation of dad walking through the door at the appointed time like clockwork every evening. Our social lives revolved around my father’s family. Cousins were part of birthday parties, holidays and summer vacations.  We celebrated baptisms, first communions, confirmations, graduations, and weddings.  Attendance at family reunions could easily sail into triple digits. Still today my family comprises a full one-third of my Christmas card list.

We’re here today to honor one of our own. I look around this capacious church and I feel an intense pride and admiration. The tight net my father and his siblings knotted with their spouses and expressly cast across their growing families not only brands my childhood, but bonds and binds me to the most stable and loyal shelter I’ll ever encounter. It’s where my values are rooted, where my sensibilities, creativity and integrity are modeled and fostered.

 

Early in life I choose one from the brood to tether myself tightly. As girls we share our hopes and dreams, write to each other in secret code.  As young women we make a pact we’ll be there to take care of each other no matter what; we imagine living together in our old age.  As I listen to the stories of a faithful man recounting his 67-year friendship with the one we’ve loved and lost, I consider the depth and breadth of my relationship with her. She turns my pages with me; she possesses the intel, the grace, the love for me to speak eloquently of my essence when it’s my turn to move on. It is a gift to be so completely known.

After mass we find ourselves congregating in the lobby again, and even though we’re all scheduled to meet at the cemetery, followed by lunch at a nearby restaurant, we linger.  It’s a hallmark of my family.  The joke is you better start saying your goodbyes the moment you walk in if you expect to walk out at a reasonable time. This is our culture; it’s who we are.

I’ve had the debate at the office about whether culture can be taught.  There’s no curriculum for culture, and there is no mainlining its absorption.  It’s kinesthetic learning. It is hands-on, requiring full immersion, repeatedly over time. In making a priority of coming together for the joys of life my dad taught the family culture to us. And as such created a haven for us to be known and to draw upon in the pain.

When the circle of life prevails, those who are present the moment we enter this world are gone by the time we find ourselves in need of an escort out.  Thank goodness my family is comprised of gatherers and lingerers. We get to leave this world surrounded by familiar faces who have memorized the recipe for our unique brand of love and support, serving that magic elixir we were welcomed in with a generation or two ago, by mothers and fathers eager with anticipation and possibility.