When I was a little girl, I wanted to marry a good Mormon boy from a large Mormon family, and in the summers, we would flit from one large family reunion to another. Instead I got Dick, who, after surviving my dad’s family’s reunion, wanted to know whether family reunions were a common thing in Utah.
You know the Christmas letters that sound as if you’re trying to pimp out your kids? Family reunions can be even worse — a full-color, animated Christmas letter you can’t tape to the refrigerator door and ignore.
If you’re in the market for a career, or have children who need a swift kick in the rear career advice, you might want to keep in mind that the bar for bragging has been raised in recent years. Where once it was enough to graduate from a respectable college and enter a respectable profession (engineer, doctor, engineer, lawyer, dentist, engineer), now you need a little something extra to get respect around the family reunion campfire.
My sweet cousin Peter, who’s number 30 of 57 first cousins or something (I lost the cousin chart they handed out the second night) is not someone I’ve talked to much before (I hang with numbers 10-20). He’s returning to college this fall, and it’s a safe guess that his major is chemical/mechanical/civil non-disobedience engineering.
Peter, who knows that I am a stay-at-home mom like all the other female cousins my age, said to me, “You studied at BYU for awhile, right?”
That night around the campfire, we had family sharing time, where each of my dad’s three sisters and six brothers (except that one brother who’s always “busy”) introduced their kids, beaming proudly if they’d managed to produce their kids in the flesh, hoping to produce adequate excuses if their kids couldn’t make it. Being out of the country on a mission for our church earns a pass, barely.
Occupations and recent accomplishments were mentioned, as were their children’s children. My oldest cousin is turning 40 next year, and he and his wife have adopted several — my three girls are a small, if glittering, contribution to the family tree.
So what’s the most coveted bragging point for mostly-Republican, highly-religious, mostly-high-achiever families? (And an automatic get-out-of-family-reunions card?)
Highest honors around the campfire go to those who have at least one child working in a top secret job for somebody like Lockheed or the NSA.* Then you get to say that you’d like to explain what Johnny does, only he can’t tell you because then he’d have to kill you. Or as my dad’s next oldest brother’s wife says her son says: “I can’t tell you or I’d have to do a lot of paperwork.”
Several of my dad’s nine siblings have sons who have every reason to view more paperwork as the kiss of death.
After my grandparent’s youngest kid told us about his youngest kid’s bluegrass band, my dad said he needed to amend his progeny spiel.
Turns out he has daughters, as do all his brothers and sisters, and, though they are not secret undercover operatives, or even doctors or lawyers or engineers, or MAYOR OF WASILLA, they are doing something wonderful: raising children to become secret undercover operatives or doctor or lawyers or engineers.
Or, as in my case: raising mothers. Mothers who will become governor of Alaska, if I and my studying for awhile at BYU had any confidence in the current fairy tale.
Dad even said that his oldest daughter does the blog, and boy! does she post often.
Then, since I am a supportive wife, I pointed out that Dick also has a top-secret, classified, vital job, and since he works for our church, he answers to a higher power. So there. Your sons might be keeping the free world safe, but my husband? He’s protecting God’s secrets.
And I am raising kids and doing the blog.
*My cousins don’t actually work for these people. I’d tell you who they work for, or where in the world they’re deployed, but then I probably wouldn’t be invited back next year . . .
Tags: blogging, bragging, children, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, descendants, Family, family reunions, family tree, genealogy, mormons, motherhood, parenting, patriotism
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Just found you by bloghopping. Love this post. Why can we never seem to be happy and content? We always try to top each other. I have even had dear friends that I have had to avoid for months at a time because of their competitiveness about their kids. You do the blog well.
Debbies last blog post..Some ants, Angelina Jolie, and flibbertigibbet
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I grew up in a small family with no extended family near me. I dreamed, wished, hoped for a large family. Then, I married my husband. David’s mother is one of 8 children, her father is one of 9 children. Everybody lives within 30 minutes of each other and a weekend together looks like the gathering of a small European nation. Now my Christmas card list is filled with names and addresses of people whom I barely know. I love it though and I feel so blessed for having married into such a great family. (No, we’re not Mormon, we’re just southern).
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Great pictures!
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Haha! We have a reunion in about a month (My paternal grandmother’s parent’s children and offspring). There will be tons of 2nd, 3rd, 4th, double 2nds. Then it’ll get really complicated because there are 2 branches of the family tree that didn’t quite split…if you know what I mean.
And I’ll only know about 10% of who these people are!
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LOVE family reunions, even with all the headaches that come with them! My Father-in-law is a convert and his family is rather exciting to be around, if you know what I mean. I think it is a great time for my kids to see people that don’t live their lives the same way we do and also learn to love people with differences. Great lessons at family gatherings.
Erins last blog post..What’s wrong with this picture?
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Wow. That is some reunion. That first photo is the cutest thing EVER.
the mama bird diariess last blog post..post convention withdrawal
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You know, I don’t think I ever met a Mormon in my whole life, and now all the bloggers I like best are Mormons! I don’t know if that means I’m drawn to Mormon writers or if Mormon mamas are just the best bloggers (or perhaps the most prolific!)!
Anyway Jane – Mormon or not – I admire you so greatly for raising your kids! My kids are now 12 and 16, and I have just reached a place in my head/heart where I’m cool with NOT having the high-powered, super cool, I’m-all-that career. At age 26, I said that in 10 years I’d be a director of a publicly-traded company, and by gum at 36 I was! And I was miserable, and I didn’t see my kids, and ahhh my poor husband – I cringe to think about what I must’ve been like! My daughter is now in 7th grade, the same grade my son was at the height of my craziness. She has some of the same teachers he had, and I don’t even remember meeting these people, let alone actually discuss my son’s progress with them! Oh how I wish I would have done things differently! I am getting back on track, mostly on track, now, and no one seems worse for wear, thank goodness. But Jane… don’t you change a thing just because some of those cousins are making other choices. YOU HAVE A HIGHER calling!! and you are achieving it. Keep on keeping on girl! And keep doing “the blog.” I love it! kk
p.s. Sounds like your dad is pretty dang proud of you too!
kikibibis last blog post..Athletic Supporters!
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I think there’s just a little misunderstanding here–all of Jane’s married girl-cousins and cousins-in-law are 1)college graduates and 2)stay-at-home mothers, in some cases, MOMs (Mothers of Many). A couple do work part-time (a nurse, a social worker, etc.). The engineer or the (dare I whisper it?) ——- or even the computer geek may have jobs that are conversation worthy, but you notice that it’s the mothers who hold the families together. The fact that we assume the importance of the mother role and that we take it for granted does not mean we’re somehow less proud of our daughters–that assumption is paired with our assumption that they are all smart enough to be worth educating. They are, after all, going to raise and educate the next generation. Notice also, please, that Jane’s aunts are also college educated, have raised families, and several are professionally employed now (in that order, incidentally).
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Thanks for the comments! Esp Kikibibi and Nancy.
I was touched that my dad made a point to recognize the mothers. I don’t want to be whiny and all “Hey, what about me?” But I confess that sometimes I feel that way. How fun it would be to be Sidney Bristow from Alias!
My own sweet mother didn’t graduate from college. She got married at 17 after graduating from HS early, and then she attended BYU for awhile before stopping to raise me. I was born when she was 18 (almost 19) years old. And she is smart and strong and talented and creative, and FABULOUS. And she puts her family first, always.
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Also, the family reunion was great. I’m impressed by my cousins, male and female. I wanted to talk about my cousin who has 5 (6?) small kids now, who ran a marathon between her 2nd and 3rd kids, who are 18 months apart in age. She’s amazing! And my french-horn-playing cousin with 3 kids under age 4.
I know we’re all doing what we should, and I know our kids deserve our attention, and that (as Kikibibi said) we are happier doing this than we would be if we pursued other things at this time, but sometimes I get cranky. Thanks for putting up with my crankiness on the blog! (and understanding it in the spirit it was meant).
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Hey, Jane, thanks for the post. I read a lot of your posts but I don’t have much time to reply to them. Not really because I’m too busy, but because I’m too lazy. It occurs to me that in spite of my many (and counting, *sigh*) years of education, almost of all of what my kids know was taught to them by their mother. I’m occasionally consulted about the finer points of grammar or deep science, which makes me feel smart sometimes. But when my kids are discussing books and math and gospel doctrine that is way above their peers’ heads, the credit goes entirely to my wife.
One quick comment about talking about kids accomplishments in the setting of a family reunion. I suspect that the daughters’ accomplishments as wives and mothers isn’t mentioned simply because it isn’t easily differentiated from others’ accomplishments as wives and mothers. It’s easy and interesting for parents to list their sons’ careers simply because they’re all different. If this was a big family consisting entirely of high-powered lawyers I suspect we wouldn’t spend much time talking about the mens’ careers. So mothers and wives “show off” their career by highlighting their children’s accomplishments, which they obviously helped bring about.
As an aside, Jane, I miss you a lot. I wish I could have been at the reunion, but my @#$%!! career, which is sucking from me the will to live, wouldn’t allow it. I’m glad you’re writing a blog because you were always one of my favorite first twenty cousins. I don’t even know the names or family affiliations of the rest of them.
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