Family Reunion

Okay it is really my bride's family since my side of the family has decided to call an end to the hostilities and not meet at all. But my bride's extended family on her mother's side gets together every year in Dublin, Texas. Yes, that Dublin Texas, home of the original Dr. Pepper. They still make and bottle the original recipe in the small 8 oz bottles with the cardboard six-pack carrier. I have sworn off most soft drinks, so when I taste one of these "originals" it can generate a diabetic shock on its own. There are always some stacked around, but I was not tempted.

At one end of the age spectrum is my bride's great uncle, Uncle Joe. 91, walks with a cane, never married. The family always attributed this to the "shell-shock" of WWII. I think he probably got back from WWII and decided one war in a lifetime was enough. When my bride was a little girl she was one of a dozen of the generation that traipsed around the countryside of Erath County with Uncle Joe. Swimming in the "jenny hole" crossing the train trestle nearby, and usually collecting a pretty good assortment of chigger and bug bites along the way. For her generation he is an icon of country wisdom. Aunt Jean (his slightly younger sister) is the only other sibling left of the original 12 kids. She is country and sometimes coarse and often crude, but honest and straight forward and makes me laugh. I hope if I am still around at that age I can keep the younger group laughing and honest. She raised three kids who are like her, rough, honest, and funny. I like them.

At the other end of the spectrum is my own 21 month old grandson, Lincoln. He was the charmer of the party, chasing around with my other grand kids Eli and Phoebe. So we had at least 5 generations there (only 32 people) All connected by family either of birth or marriage, notated by the long family tree chart that we were supposed to update with new births, deaths, and marriages. 5 generations.

As I watched these generations interact it occurred to me that as far as lifestyle was concerned, they had little in common. Uncle Joe and Jean were essentially farm people. Canning their own vegetables, catching/killing/butchering their own meat, making their clothes was familiar to them and foreign to rest of us. WWII was a tsunami of cultural change. Men returned from the war and most (unlike Uncle Joe) never returned to the farm. The entered "business" My dad came home and went to optometry college, my bride's father, though not in the military went into business. Each successive generation has moved further and further from the farm. We went from producing our own substances of life to paying others to produce it. Technology has moved us further from the interaction of substance of life to the multitasking of management over others producing for us.

All of this made me wonder if culturally we adapt as people to the societal change or do we change as people and thus change the culture. Would I have made a very good farmer? I love interaction with people, with new ideas, with new challenges. Would I have just been that farmer that was just annoying to all the quiet farmers? Or because I was already one generation removed from the farm that I adapted to a lifestyle that fit the moment? How will Eli and Phoebe and Lincoln and Isaac have to adapt? As a 21 month old, Lincoln knows the rudimentary advantages of his mother having an I-phone on which he can watch movies. Can Uncle Joe adapt to this new innovation, or should he? Probably not.

But fundamentally how does this change us? I read an article about a book from a guy named Nick Carr called The Shallows: How the Internet is Affecting our Minds The basic premise being that we as a culture have lost the ability to concentrate, to think, to muse. That the preeminent talent today is multitasking. This struck a chord with me because it seems to me that we have lost the importance of being discerning. We communicate in soundbites, we think in bumper stickers, our relationships are paper thin and a mile wide.

I am going with my kids on a trip next week. Can I go the entire week without my Blackberry?(yes, it is old technology) my laptop? Facebook? LinkedIn? Can I unplug for 5 days? It makes me queasy thinking about it. But more importantly, can I spend a portion of each day in silence? in meditation? musing? wondering? reflecting? Which life would Uncle Joe understand best? Is there a value in teaching each of my grand kids to think, to wonder, to sit and ponder?

Family reunions may be the last place where all these generations come together for one last look at what has been, and to wonder what will be.

Godspeed again, the journey continues.
Don