The Greater Meaning of Family Gatherings

 

Bates family reunion and Maine "cottage"

Bates family reunion and Maine "cottage"

We have just finished up our Maine family reunion at the family cottage, and I’ve been trying to think of literature that deals with reunions.  A book that comes to mind is Wallace Stegner’s fine novel Passing to Safety, which opens and concludes with a reunion in a New England summer home.  Reflecting upon the book helps me think through some of the issues that are arising with our own extended family. 

These include whether the Bates clan will prevail as an entity, given that we are scattered all over the United States and that the 1903 cottage is beginning to present us with considerable financial challenges. Or will the forces of entropy prevail, tearing at the house and driving us apart so that we meet less and less frequently, holding on only through Christmas letters and perhaps an occasional wedding or funeral?  Would it be so bad if we all went our own way?  Passing to Safety helps me understand why we must hold on.

The book is about two old couples who have been friends for decades.  The four meet when the two men are teachers at the University of Wisconsin.  Both are denied tenure.  Larry, who is married to Sally, goes on to become a publisher and award-winning writer, while Sid, married to Charity, becomes a much beloved literature professor at Dartmouth, even though a part of him has always longed to be a poet. 

Over the years, their friendship has waxed and waned.  Charity is a domineering woman who gets a lot done but sometimes alienates and infuriates Larry and Sally.  She proves to be a great friend to Sally when Sally contracts polio, however, and the way that she pushes Sid to succeed perhaps keeps him from purposelessly drifting.  Or maybe her bullying keeps him from finding his true destiny as a poet.  It’s hard to tell.  In any event, the four have gathered in the summer home that in the past they have returned to year after year.  This time it is because Charity is dying of cancer.   Charity has summoned them.  Just as she has wanted to control everything else in her life, Charity wants to control her dying and she wants to dictate Sid’s future.

I don’t have the novel before me so I can’t quote a passage to demonstrate its rich humanity.  It is a wise book that reminds one how densely textured life can be, even in its smallest aspects.  We weave a tapestry through our friendships with others, and while at times we may become frustrated with each other, the sustenance provided by the bonds trumps the irritations.  And these bonds don’t just happen.  They must be cultivated, time must be set aside for them, and effort must be expended.  When conflicts arise, we cannot just run away to our autonomous existences but must work things out.

This has become clearer to me as I have become older (I am now 58).  When I was younger, I thought that I could be self-sufficient.  But to live life in that manner threatens to turn ties with others into mere use relationships, where we take advantage of each other for what each can provide and then move on.  Of course, it’s okay that many relationships are like that.  But there must be some that are different.


This past reunion, when I found myself sitting in a living room filled with the lively chatter of cousins who had not seen each other for three years, with the portraits of our great-great-great grandparents looking down on us from the walls, I felt bathed in a deep warmth.  Extended family has seldom seemed as important to me as it did at that moment.

One reason for the intensity of my feelings may have been my awareness of the passage of time, precipitated by the absence of my Uncle Ted, who died last fall.  The three-year reunions may give us a sense of continuity, but of course time keeps changing the configurations.  Of the three Bates brothers who fathered the clan, only my father remains (he is 86).   I think about how what used to be commonplace, generations of families living together, is now achieved only by reunions.  Of course there are advantages to living away from one’s relatives.  But it does mean that one is deprived of an environment where one knows everyone’s individual histories.  I don’t know most of my work acquaintances the way I know these people.  I know my extended family’s triumphs and tragedies, the jobs found and the jobs lost, the marriages and divorces.  Two of the families have lost children and another young cousin is struggling with a severe pancreatic illness. 

Having been one of those who have lost a child, I am awed by the way that children keep coming.  There are 11 members of my generation, 17 of the next one, and eight so far in the generation after that.   My children assume that the reunions occur naturally, just as I did when I was growing up.   At the same time, now that Toby, Darien, and daughter-in-law Betsy are in their twenties, we now talk about what it will take to keep things going.   Although the 11 cousins and my parents are currently responsible for the cottage finances, it appears that we will need our children to begin contributing very soon if we are to afford the new roof over the screen porch, the new paint job (or should we panel?) for the exterior, the chimney repair.  This past year we had to step up our financial commitment to redo the boulder foundation (the house was beginning to list), the outdated wiring, and a rotting bathroom floor.

So much in life commands our attention that it is easy to ignore the importance of these ties.  After all, if we let them go, life would still go on.  Only, I think, we would experience an unsettling rootlessness, a gnawing dissatisfaction, a dismal sense of emptiness.  Reading a novel like Passing to Safety reminds us of the value of family and friendship bonds and therefore can spur us to do the work necessary to keep them going.   By beginning his novel with the families gathering to be with one who is dying, Stegner clarifies what is at stake.  Friendship helps us assert meaning in the face of unfathomable disintegration.

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