Family

Like most people, I’ve been happy to see and spend time with lots of my family members during the holidays season.

There’s something special about being with people who share a lot of the same memories.

According to my old dictionary from college, a family is “a group of people related by blood or marriage.” Of course since today many couples don’t bother to get legally married that definition has probably been expanded.

My family includes, cousins, second cousins, cousins once or twice removed, in-laws, cousins, parents and children of in-laws, and many more. When we first got married my husband gave up trying to remember all the relationships and just called them “step-neighbors-in-law.”

Whatever you may call them, even extended families share similarities, whether those are caused by heredity or common experiences.

I’m thankful to have such a wonderful family and hope we can all keep in touch. 

FairyTale Town

Next Saturday I'll be giving a presentation at FairyTale Town in Sacramento, CA about one of my books. I'll be one of many authors at the ScholarShare Children's Book Celebration.

I'll be sharing with the kids about one of my books, Slime & All and expect to have a good time doing so.  As a parent, grandparent and former teacher, I love spending time with kids.

But something surprising has happened.

I found out one of the people presenting immediately after me is a distant relative. And I do mean distant.

His name is Andy Domek and I think he's my second cousin's cousin's son-in-law, but I may have missed someone in between.

I have a very complicated group of people who I see at family gatherings and consider them all family, but the relationships are hard to keep straight.

When we got married my husband soon gave up on figuring out who was a second cousin twice removed or a Cousin's cousin's grandchild and coined the term, step-neighbor-in-law, to refer to all of them.

So, besides meeting some wonderful kids and telling them about my book, this weekend I'll get to see one of my step-neighbors-in law at FairyTale-Town.

And that sounds sort of like a fairy tale itself. ;-)

Christmas Traditions

When I was a kid every Christmas Eve our family would sing carols from a book illustrated by Fern Bisel Peat. The carols were interspersed with verses about the birth of Christ from the King James Bible and our mother would read those aloud to us.

I still have that big, blue songbook with the lovely illustrations, although it's showing signs of age. (Of course, so am I.)

After we were finished singing our mother would read us The Night Before Christmas, we'd hang our stockings on a bookcase (we didn't have a fireplace) and go to bed wondering what Santa Claus would bring.

The next morning we'd awake early and find the full stockings tied to the foot of our bed to keep us occupied for a while so the grown-ups could sleep a while longer.

After opening the presents under the tree, eating brunch, and playing with our new toys for a while we'd put on some new clothes and take off for the long drive to our cousins' house. There we'd join lots of other relatives for dinner and even more gifts.

Finally we'd drive home and go to bed wearing the new pajamas one aunt always gave us. That night we'd fall asleep right away.

What Christmas traditions did your family have when you were a kid?

All One Family

I've blogged about my strange and extremely extended family before. (If interested you can see those posts here:
http://onwordsblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/extended-family.html
and here:
http://onwordsblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/its-all-relative.html  )

But there's something I've neglected to say: If I can love relatives who have different religious and political views and/or live thousands of miles away so I rarely or never see them, why can't we realize that all human beings are one family and learn to love each other? I'm tired of hearing about wars and rumors of war, people starving or being forced into slavery, and racial or religious prejudices. It's time to stop those things.

Thousands of years ago when humans encountered people who were different from themselves it was usually because the strangers were coming to take their territory and possessions. But, come on, we're not primitive people anymore. Isn't it time we realized we really are all one family? Why can't we learn to get along with each other?

Okay, that's my idealistic vent for the day.