When I sat down at my morning spot to drink my coffee and catch up on the news, this is what greeted me…
Meet Giraffe Fren, Jacko’s toy de’jour. Not sure how he ended upright on my coffee table, but at least he had the good sense to blend in with the decor. As I look around the family room, the decorations tell the story of my family. There are six of us…
Along with three retrievers…
On Pam’s side of the family, there are eleven more. My extended family adds another twenty-one. There are newlyweds among us, a couple out in California, along with Fred the cat who somehow survived ten minutes inside a running dryer. One of us lives in New York City. We have someone from Scotland, another from the Philippines. There are conservatives and liberals. We have baseball fans and football fans. There are Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians, and none of the above. We have southerners and yankees, republicans, democrats and a couple stubborn libertarians. We have nurses, teachers, and business owners. We have some who work for the government, some for non-profits and others who work in the corporate world. There are musicians everywhere. But everyone, all of us have a place. In this way we aren’t any different than any of your families, or the hundreds of millions of families gathering together to celebrate Christmas from all around the world.
But maybe we are different. Sometimes when I see us all together I can’t help feeling that there is something unique about us. What makes us so is where we came from. Emmett and Betty Dunnevant were different, by practically any measure—not perfect by any means—but different. The magical combination of their DNA running through all of our veins bequeathed to us something rare, I think. There is a devotion we feel for each other. Although we are all so different, the things that bind us together are so much more powerful than the things that would divide us. There are the strong opinions, the loud and boisterous talking at dinner which might seem to outsiders like arguing but to us is totally normal conversation. There are the conflicting memories from our childhoods where we have airbrushed the awful away. Just last night when I reminded my older sister Linda of what it was like to share an apartment in New Orleans with a hundred roaches, she claimed not to remember any of it. Then when I reminded her of how whenever we cut on the kitchen light first thing in the morning they would all scurry away across the walls, floor and ceiling—she hesitated, then closed her eyes in recognition of the long-suppressed horror! Then, of course, there are the noses, that inescapable physical trait that identifies us, setting us apart from the rest of the world. We got it from Mom, the prominent Dixon Nose.
But, despite the occasional horror show, most of our childhood memories consist of the certain and sure…that we were loved by our parents. And, if we knew what was good for us we better love each other or our Mother would wipe the floor up with us. Even now, nearly a decade after her passing, whenever I am uncharitable, rude or dismissive of someone, I am reminded of Mom and what she would say to me if she knew. Whenever I am too busy to be kind to someone, I think of my Dad and immediately am ashamed of myself. Their presence in my life is still very real. They have lived rent free in my head ever since they went to be with The Lord.
So, over the next few days as we gather and eat together, as the volume around the table begins to rise, I will think of them, the two people who started it all. I can only hope that my children will feel the same way about us when it is their turn to carry this torch.
Strong family ties are a blessing of extreme rarity
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