The village people

Family is wherever you find it

Shawna Sweeney, Volunteer Staff

A husband, a wife and some kids is not a family; it’s a terribly vulnerable survival unit. Now those of you who get married or are married, when you fight with your spouse, what each of you will be saying to the other one actually is, “You’re not enough people. You’re only one person. I should have hundreds of people around.”

There is a lot of discussion these days about family values and all the ways that they are falling apart. There are people pointing fingers right and left claiming that it’s the conservatives, that it’s the liberals, the homosexuals, the rotten parents, the delinquent kids. That it must have something to do with divorce rates or sex on TV or cohabitation. That some or all of these things are contributing to the breakdown of the traditional family structure.

The thing is, the traditional family structure was already gutted to give birth to the nuclear family. Back in the day, most people had enormous extended families. It was not just husband + wife = kids. It was husband + wife + kids + four grandparents + seven aunts + eight uncles + 30 cousins. There was a camouflaging crowd. There were people in your corner. There was a vast support system of flesh, blood and compassion.

I grew up in a pretty big family and always had a lot of people around. I know hordes of first, second and third cousins by name. I have even met some of my fourth cousins. In my family the philosophy was: cousins is cousins is cousins; it didn’t matter how far removed or even if they were blood related.

I didn’t realize that this was any kind of hot commodity when I was growing up. That was just how it was in my family. But the more people I talk to, the more I realize that a lot of families have become much smaller. They have broken down into nomadic “nuclear” units and lost the road back to their greater wholes. They are a few, rather than many.

One of my many cousins is getting married in a few weeks. She is the third one to get married this year. Tons and tons of relatives will attend the wedding and then wait breathlessly for babies.

And when the babies arrive, they will look a lot like the parents. Or maybe like the grandparents. There will be hints in these new bodies and faces of all the people who came before. A sort of generational tribute in the form of blood and bones.

They will be welcomed with open arms by dozens of cousins and tons of aunts and uncles and grandparents and family friends. They will be minor celebrities and inherit a whole village of people to care for and about them.

I didn’t realize how much I needed my village until I left home for school. I missed it so much that I had to adopt a whole new village of friends and acquaintances. They are just as caring and supportive and protective as my own flesh-and-blood family, and I feel lucky to be part of their lives.

The problem is that a lot of people are not able to engineer their own extended families. They are not connecting with each other on a personal level and establishing the kinds of bonds you find inside a village. They are getting too lonely and it is making the problem so much worse. They will breed children who feel lonely that will get married to other lonely people who will never quite know why they feel so sad . . . or even what is missing.

I try to share the legacy of my extended family as much as I can because I have an idea of what is missing and why it makes people so sad. They are all alone and do not feel like they belong anywhere. They have lost their way home.

There are so many people pointing fingers, but there is really no one to blame. It is not the liberals or the homosexuals. It has nothing to do with television or relaxed sexual morals. The disease that is killing our families is loneliness and there is only one cure . . . to find enough people to make a village and then stick together as much as you can.

It’s the only way.