Family reunions can be tricky.
The ones I’ve attended have been marked by much affection:
Laughter over shared memories,
Lots of hugs and food,
And sometimes happy tears, for the ones no longer with us.
As a former newspaper copy editor, I also recall reports of dysfunctional ones, where long-held grievances came out to play. Some ended in violence.
Every four years, the United States holds the world’s largest family reunion.
The world watches, wondering which reunion they’ll see. This Election Day, I reflect on what I learned from my family that I take to this reunion.
The Tornabenes:
Sam and Sarah were my mom’s biological family.
Sam, a first-generation Italian immigrant, became a Gary, Ind., police officer in 1935. He loved his cigars and his black-and-white TV console. He wasn’t a conversationalist: If you didn’t agree with him, there wasn’t much point in talking.
After my biological grandmother Theresa died, Sam married Sarah. I knew her as my grandmother (or one of them – more soon). You could not leave her kitchen without eating something – if not whatever pasta was on the stove or in the fridge, at least a Stella D’Oro cookie and a glass of 7-Up.
From Sam:
I take a sense of stubborn conviction.
From Sarah:
the hospitality and hugs.
My mom’s biological family ruptured in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s.
- My Uncle Fred, who lived with mental disabilities, was sent to a state institution.
- My Uncle Tony, pre-gender transition, was in a convent studying to become a nun.
- And my mother as a pre-teen was placed in an orphanage. (My Uncle Russ, a decade older than his siblings, was living on his own far away from Indiana.)
Amazingly, each sibling survived the ’50s to live strong lives in decades to come.
From my mom and her siblings:
I take perseverance.
The Kochs:
Bob and Sylvia, themselves in their late 20s, took in my mom as a foster child.
They wanted a family and were told it was biologically unlikely, but they would not be deterred. They adopted two boys and a girl in addition to fostering my mom. And then, what do you know? They did have three biological children. A truly blended family -long before The Brady Bunch.
Bob, a longtime refinery worker, had a fiery temper and a heart that could melt at the right moments. (just ask my sister, who endured exclamations of “Lisa-meesa-heesa-lisa” coming from this 6-foot, 200-pound-plus man, complete with a big hug, whenever she entered the house as a youngster).
Sylvia, not so different from Sarah, had a kitchen of plenty, though her meals were Polish rather than Italian, with lots of meat and potatoes. Like Sarah, she could be counted on for hugs; unlike Sarah, she was known to share a well-timed piece of advice – typically out of Bob’s earshot.
Think, All in the Family.
But without the laugh track.
My brother, sister and I bonded with my mom’s foster siblings, who were closer to our age than hers. Even today, I think of them as cousins rather than aunts or uncles.
From the Kochs:
I take big-heartedness and keeping counsel.
The Pennsylvania Smalls:
As complicated and sometimes messy as the family tree was on my mom’s side, my dad’s was more straight-forward.
Charles and Lucille (known to all as Cook and Lucy) lived most of their lives at 107 Main St. in McSherrystown, Pa. They had five children, one of whom died within days of his birth.
The other four – my dad and my aunts Joan, Elaine, and Betty – were inseparable, regardless of years or moves or the building of families.
McSherrystown – and its nearby communities – were places of hundreds or several thousand, not cities. My brother, sister and I were the only ones of the 19 first cousins not to be born and raised there.
Visiting always felt like entering another world. It was rural (one of my dad’s close high school friends owned a farm just outside of town), quiet (even stores and restaurants closed by 9 p.m. when we were kids) and intimate.
Everyone knew one another, and more often than not, were related.
My grandmother would update my dad about goings-on by referencing the subject as the sister or brother or cousin of someone he knew in high school.
When we would come for summer vacation, my siblings and I would enjoy my grandfather (“Pappy,” to us) taking us on treks to covered bridges, chapels in neighboring communities, and almost always to the dairy for ice cream.
I would park my radio in the bedroom my brother and I shared and tune in to York/Hanover’s WYCR-FM for American Top 40, to get a reminder of home.
We would enjoy Utz potato chips, Snyder’s pretzels, and Tastykake butterscotch krimpets at my grandparents’ table, knowing it would be another year before we could enjoy these regional treats.
Today, the area is more suburban and not very different from my world in Raleigh, N.C., where I can find Utz, Snyder’s and Tastykakes at my grocery.
From the Smalls,:
I take the comforts of tradition and small-town friendliness.
And, finally: My nuclear family:
Bob and Nancy married in 1962 and did their best to build the lives and family they wanted. I came first in 1963, followed by my brother a year and four days later and my sister in 1967.
We were upwardly mobile, hopping from one Chicago suburb and neighborhood to another before settling on the north side in the Sauganash Park neighborhood. That’s where my parents’ marriage imploded, just shy of a decade.
To their credit, my parents did their level best to shield us and backed each other on the occasions when one of us tried to play them against each other. Though very, very different people, each modeled to us a strong code of ethics and the importance of telling the truth. Both showed us there were more important values in life than acquiring wealth or power.
My dad worked to keep us rooted to the Pennsylvania Smalls as much as possible while recognizing that each of us had our own identities and loved our Midwest lives. He returned to live in McSherrystown only after he retired in the early ’90s.When the demands of aging required him to move to Virginia near my brother’s family, he took it on with the determination he made any prior life move.
My mom, as I’ve noted, was ever the wanderer – San Francisco, Phoenix, Chicago, Sarasota, often more than once. Until my brother, sister and I moved with my dad from Chicago to South Bend, Ind., in 1979, she made sure her home had bedrooms for us when we stayed on weekends and summer months. She charmed everyone she met with her larger-than-life personality and candor.
From my parents:
I take truth-telling, fortitude, and the ability to live and thrive despite discomfort.
This weekend, I head to Pennsylvania to see my cousins and their families.
I’m looking forward to it, even as I acknowledge trepidation. For openers, I don’t know how well my “Harris-Walz” bumper sticker will play.
Still, with the gifts I take from my families of origin, I know I’ll have what I need. For today’s reunion, and this weekend’s…
And all the ones ahead.
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