Family, InLaws and all that involves!

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about family.  Not so much my immediate nuclear family (me, husband, kids) but my family of origin (parents, sibling, grandparents) as well as my inlaws.  I think that’s one of the curses of being an amateur genealogist, you spend so much time looking at family and family ties and family connections that it forces you to think about your own.

Growing up, I had a small family.  It was my parents, my brother and me.  That was it.  We lived six, seven hours away from either set of grandparents and we’d make a twice-a-year obligatory trip to see them for a long weekend, but we were never close.  My mother had one brother that I saw maybe four times my entire life (he had  ...has? … four sons and I couldn’t even tell you their names) and my father had one sister who never married and never had children.)  The impact of extended family on my life was minimal.

Growing up, I never really thought about inlaws, or extended family, or cousins or aunts and uncles … it just wasn’t relevant to me and I never knew any differently.  I knew my mother didn’t get along with my paternal grandmother, but then again, my paternal grandmother wasn’t the sort of woman that people got along with.  I could tell you stories … Lord a’mercy, the stories! … but that’s for another post.  Needless to say, she wasn’t warm-n-fuzzy, and as I only saw her twice a year, and then only for one afternoon each trip, she had little impact on my upbringing.  My paternal grandfather died when I was very, very young; I never knew him.

When, at the tender age of 19, I met the man who would become my husband, I wasn’t thinking of joining families.  “Family” was just some near-strangers who lived 6+ hours away and who I saw twice a year.  I assumed (“when you ass-u-me, you make an ass out of u and me” … anyone else remember that?) that once we got married, our “family” would be him and me and maybe, some day, in the far off future, some children, but I didn’t even take in to account extended family.

Boy was I young and naïve.  And wrong.  Thank God, I was oh-so wrong!  I married a man who came from a large, close family.  He grew up in a small town in Kentucky where both sides of his family had long, established roots.  His mother was the youngest of eight children, and all of the siblings were close.  He grew up with aunts and uncles that were as important to him as were his own parents, and he grew up with cousins that were as close as siblings.  He knew his grandparents, not as twice-a-year strangers, but as an integral part of his childhood – for the first 10 years of his life, he lived literally across the street from his grandparents.  To him, family wasn’t a twice-a-year obligation, it was a blessing and a joy (and sometimes a nuisance and pain in the butt J ) but good or bad, like it or not, family was family and they were there, they were staying and they were in your life.  Period.

Wow.  This wasn’t the way I grew up.  Not at all.

As I got to know his parents, I came to love them more than I thought I would.  I had a preconceived idea as to what our relationship would be like (after all, mothers in law and daughters in law NEVER get along, right?) so I had to overcome those self-imposed hurdles.  I had to get past the idea that she was going to hate me just because I was the daughter-in-law and we had to work through some rocky patches, but I can say, with confidence and complete assurance, that our relationship today is solid and secure and I love her deeply and I genuinely think she is one of the most amazing women I’ve known. 

And his grandparents?  Oh, his grandparents!!  I got to know them and love them more than I realized.  They have both gone on to Glory now, Popaw in 2009 and Mammy is 2012 but their presence is still a daily thing in our lives.  It was Mammy who started me on this genealogical journey I’m on; she asked me if I could find some info on her family – and look what that started!  J  It is her collection of photos and memories that I have inherited and I hope to pass that on, one day, to my descendents.  I truly loved those two people for they taught me about family and life, about God and about repentance, about forgiveness and acceptance.  They showed me humility and grace; generosity of spirit and gentleness of soul.  They showed me contentment in circumstances and grace in the face of heartache.  They loved me, and the knowledge of that fact alone is enough to make me weep with astonishment.  They loved me.  They didn’t even know me when I came into the family, but they didn’t care.  Their grandson loved me, and therefore, they loved me, too.  Over the next quarter-century, they came to know me and love me on my own merits, but at first, they just loved me because he loved me.  That was all they needed. 

Wow.  Mind-blowing.  When I was a pre-teen, my mother once told me, “When you were born, I thought I’d love you.  But I didn’t.”  I said, “But you eventually came to love me, right?” and her response was, “Well, you didn’t make it easy, did you?”  For an insecure, unsure person who grew up knowing that her own mother didn’t like her, certainly didn’t love her, didn’t even really want her … this idea that love and acceptance was NOT based on what I did was life-changing. 

Then, about five years ago, my son fell in love.  They were both in high school when they started dating, and as their relationship progressed, we all came to realize that this wasn’t just a high school infatuation.  We got to know her as their relationship grew and she slipped easily and seamlessly into our family until soon, it was as if she had always been a part of our lives.  If she had any of those adjustment issues that I had faced 25+ years earlier, I never saw it.  When they announced their engagement, no one was surprised; we all welcomed her with open arms.  (I hope she remembers it the same way; if there was any hesitancy it was unintentional).  When they married, I was overjoyed to welcome her into my heart – and yet another misconception about “family” that I carried from my bizarre upbringing had been shattered.

Now I was a mother in law (!) and I realized that I loved my new daughter in law without reservation and without hesitation.  I loved her, not just because my son loved her, but because of who she was independent of him.  And with my new daughter-in-law came a whole new group of people:  her parents, her brother … I now consider all of them as my family.  Her parents and her brother have eaten meals at my table, and we’ve joined families for holidays and celebrations; we celebrate each other’s joys and share each other’s sorrows. 

My idea of family has so changed.  Growing up, extended family was something that was distant and removed; they were an obligation and a duty, but not a joy.  Family was something you strove to distance yourself from – not something you embraced joyfully and eagerly.

I still am not close to my family of origin.  I doubt I ever will be, but I’ve come to be OK with that.  God has shown me that family doesn’t have to be people biologically related to you.  He has put parents and grandparents (and aunts and uncles and cousins) in my life who have shown me what family can be, what they should be – and most importantly to me, they have shown me that even when things DON’T go smoothly, and when rough patches happen, family is still family.  You can’t just delete people from your life because they don’t fit in with your idea of what family is. 

I am still, at the mature age of 48, still trying to overcome some of the crap from my childhood.  When you grow up hearing that you were a mistake, that your mother wishes you had never been born and that the only reason you were here was because you were conceived pre Roe v. Wade, that can cause you to have a shaky sense of self-esteem.  God has been good to place people in my life who have shown me that love is NOT conditional, love doesn’t have to be earned and that a genuine, sincere family isn’t necessarily a family of biology and blood and DNA.  Thru genealogy, I feel a connection to the family that has gone before and as my family has grown thru marriage and babies and inlaws, I know I will have a connection to family that hasn’t even yet entered my life.

But I also know with 100% certainty, that due to the wonderful people that God has put in my life, I know that the family that I’ve yet to know will be cherished and loved.  And to my anticipated audience of my future great-great grandchildren, I hope you know that I love you already.  Even 100 years before you’re conceived, I love you and I pray for you.  I welcome you to the family and I hope you come to know that you are part of a long legacy of love and family.  Some of it is good, some of it is bad and some of it we want to sweep under the rug, but we don’t.  We are a family.  All of us.  Those of us biologically related and those of us related by nothing but love and our hearts.  We are family.  And that’s enough.  That’s everything.  Trust me.  Being able to say, “I belong.  I have family.  I have love” is a gift that I didn’t get until my adult years, and I cherish that gift every single day.  I hope that you, my future, anticipated descendents never know what it’s like to not know that you are loved, you are accepted, you are cherished.  I hope you always take comfort in belonging, in knowing you have a place of security and comfort.  But if you ever do have those doubts, please know that I, even tho I don’t know you yet, I love you and I assure you, you have a place in the lineage of love that makes up your family.