Family

As this is the weekend for Mother's Day, and having spent a few hours with extended relatives, my mind keeps going back to the family.  I was lucky to grow up were both sides of my family have large extended families.  I was lucky to know most of my grandparents brothers and sisters and there children.  It was great, because I had many 3rd and 4th cousins around my age.

But family was one of the failings of my marriage.  For me I never saw me and my wife as a family.  I always saw a family as a mother, father and children.  It was hard to translate this in the 21 years we were together.  How does one have family home evening, family pray, family scripture study, just between 2 people?  And then being a member of church that the major focus is the family.  I always felt like the outsider looking in.

But my thought on the extended family were fun times.  Like I said, both sets of grandparent had large families.  While living in Tennessee, I remember a lot of holidays spent at my grandparent house, with all the relatives  there.  I would spend some time at the house of my dad's parents, and my grad father's brother, Uncle Tom would come by to pick up his mail.

When we moved to Arizona, it was spending time with my mom's side of the family.  This meant a lot of time in Snowflake / Taylor area.  Many a week or weekend was spent there, see my grand mother's sisters or my grand father's brother and sister.  One Thanksgiving we went down in Tucson, and spent that weekend with the Jones.  The McMullan home in Snowflake always felt like a second home.  Many a night spent there.  My grand father's brother, Vern, had a farm in Taylor, where he had cows and horses.  I learned how to ride a horse at Uncle Vern's.  He always called me Green Horn, and I wore that nickname as badge of honor.

Again one of the failings of my marriage was interaction with my wife's extended family.  Both her mom and dad came from large families.  The problems I had was more with my wife's mothers side.  It was not her mother's brothers or sisters that did not make feel welcome in the family, but there kids.  They made me feel like the outsider.  I was a city boy, and they had nothing to do with city people.  When I did go to family things only few would even talk to me.

As a Mormon we are taught that we have another family, a ward family.  Growing up I only lived in two wards, Chattanooga 1st, in Tennessee, and Mesa 13th, here in Arizona.  Growing up in the 13th ward, or as it was know, "The New Wed, Nearly Dead Ward", youth were seen as special.  From the age of 12, for a bout a year, I was the only one in my group. So I got a lot of attention.  When I got married, it changed.  I went back to the guy that observed everything.  It is somewhat being shy, but you really get to pick you friends.  With my wife leaving the ward in September, it has caused some to see me as a not very happy person, because I do not interact with a lot of people.  There is a lot of resentment toward me as well, because my wife was well liked.  Some feel that I have commented such a great sin that they have a dislike of me.  Some have daughters that Kim was or would have been there adviser for, so they see it as me taking away there daughters opportunity to work with Kim.  So I sit most of the times, on a bench by myself.

Today being the day after Mother's Day, I had the pleasure to talk to one o f my favorite relatives for an hour.  It really makes miss my mom and Grandmother, because they to saw the importance of family.  From both them I have a love of the extended family and I really cherish the short moments we have when we do get together.  And it is there example that I still go to a ward, were some do not make feel like part of the family.