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Five-Step Recovery From Family Reunions
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Published: March 14, 2008
Family reunions are a charming phenomenon, awash in warm feelings and cold sweat.
We like to get together occasionally with our kinfolk, those at our end of the gene pool.
Kinfolk are dangerous individuals who can recite all our faults and provide blackmail material to our children. If we were smart, once we'd grown up and escaped, we would never go near these people again. But many of us are drawn to cousinly confabs. And based on my attendance at several such events, I've determined there are five phases to the typical family reunion.
The first is the meet-and-greet phase. That's when everyone is on best behavior. We subtly assess each other, trying to gauge who's gained the most weight, who's lost the most hair, who's driving the nicest car. We all confess astonishment at how fast the kids are growing up.
At my last reunion, most of the kids were teenagers who looked horrified at just being there. They huddled together for protection - cell phones flipped open, frantically sending text messages to their friends, begging to be rescued. The oldest generation huddled together too, quickly getting down to discussing pressing physical matters involving hemorrhoids and heartburn.
That left we of the sandwich generation to talk hormones and hot flashes, and to focus on the food, from-scratch dishes made by grandmas who still remember how to cook. It's always the best part of our reunions. With the food, we consumed a few drinks, and as everyone started to relax, we moved into the "Remember When" phase.
This phase causes the teens to actually writhe in agony. I remember experiencing agony myself at earlier reunions, but now I quite enjoy the Remember Whens. Many of our most colorful memories involve the family rebel - my cousin Joe. He's the one we all shake our heads over, but secretly admire. And he's still rebelling. At our most recent reunion, his wife told how she had to pay $400 to bail him out of jail after he refused to sign a ticket given to him by a law enforcement officer.
At this point, many reunions degenerate into the third phase - church-state squabbling. True to form, my family began discussing religion and politics, and things got heated. Names of presidential candidates were tossed around as weapons
Wisely, before things really got out of hand, we moved into the fourth phase - segregation of the sexes. This seems to happen at every reunion.
The ladies will devote hours to dissecting the failings of their men. In our family, we usually allow Joe's long-suffering wife to go first. She recently described a problem she was having with one of their horses. This creature has a habit of standing on the front porch of their rural home and pointing his posterior toward the house so that when Joe's wife looks out the front window, instead of being able to see the glories of nature, she gets an eyeful of an equine end zone.
My cousin, apparently sensing a soulmate in this rascally beast, has refused to discourage its behavior. So his wife, unable to coax the horse off the porch, started gently pitching rocks at its feet to encourage it to comply. Unfortunately, one of the rocks bounced up and shattered the front window, and my cousin had the gall to be upset with his wife.
The final phase comes when we are emotionally waterlogged, and we say fond goodbyes. Soon, the reunions will become part of our "Remember Whens." Before I know it, the teens will be the middle-agers, and I'll be one of the old fogies.
Hopefully, I won't talk about hemorrhoids. But given my family history, I'm probably doomed to repeat it.
Jackie Papandrew lives in Largo and is the author of the syndicated humor column, "Airing My Dirty Laundry."
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