Family Connections

Family Connections

Author’s Note: If you got this link in your inbox and we’re related, then this is for you. It’s part of an ongoing series of loosely related essays and opinions, and nonsense appropriately named “Dave Rambles On”, that I was encouraged to start up again by your mom/our aunt. I would love it if you read this and also dug around a bit through the other work here. If you want, I will add you to the email list.

Please find the sentiments here sincere, and please share them with the rest of us Bare Grandchildren.

A year ago, as we were preparing for Thanksgiving, I texted my father’s eldest sister to check in with her. She had been having some health issues, and I was anxious to hear how she was feeling. She replied that she had been connecting with my other aunt’s eldest daughter. I noted that I hadn't seen that cousin since I was a little fellow and that my primary memory of her had been a picture of her when she was Ms. Wisconsin in a prominent place on my grandmother's wall.

My aunt encouraged me to get in contact with my cousin, and, as was common with her, when she said to do something, it was expected that we do it. So, I texted my cousin. In these days of busy schedules and copiously filled daily planners, I lost track and didn’t follow up. I’ve never been a very good communicator, at least not by letter, text, or email.

In the intervening year, my aunt's health declined significantly to the point where she was rendered nearly helpless. I still communicated with her, primarily via text, and continued to send her my weekly essays. I dreaded that, at her venerable age, things might not go back to how they were. I took the opportunity to tell her exactly how I felt about her after we were alerted that she was getting hospice care. I’m glad I did. I kept sending her pictures of our family, our granddaughter, and sending uplifting messages, which her daughter and caretakers dutifully read to her. 

Then, the inevitable happened, but like all such things, it takes a while to get the idea through the cranium. For almost a decade, my aunt had always been there, either a call, an email, or a text away. I corresponded with her more than with anyone else except Pop Bare, and I cannot say how important that was for me and how grateful I am that she was there. 

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My aunt was the eldest of my grandparents' three children. My father was the youngest. She had five children, their middle sister had four, and Pop Bare had my brother and me. My aunt's eldest son is the oldest of the grandchildren (also named Dave), and I am the youngest by far. As I've shared before, I came along 12 years after my brother, who is closer in age to all of them. 

Although my grandparents grew up and lived in PA their entire lives, both my aunts moved away as young adults. My parents continued to live in Pennsylvania, while my cousins all grew up in the Midwest. When my folks split, my mother got custody and remarried, and we moved to the country. I was quite small then. My cousins visited rarely, and we had even rarer family events that drew us together. When they were visiting, though, I was always excited. We have no cousins on our mother’s side, so to me, they felt like intensely cool older siblings. I grew up loving and admiring and even idolizing them. I also felt alienated from them because of my home situation. They were basically adults, and I was a kid. They lived in Chicago and Wisconsin, and I lived in the Pennsylvania countryside. They were all college grads, funny, smart, and very hip. I was just a farm boy in hand-me-downs. Aside from them always making me feel loved and special when they visited, we were never able to develop deep closeness, and that was a lot to do with the distance, but also, their families were more enlightened and progressive. This isn’t a criticism of my parents at all. Just an observation of the reality.

I’ve always been terrible with birthdays and holiday cards. They used to send me books and cards, but I was terrible at correspondence. It’s only more recently that I have made even a little effort to stay in contact, and it’s been paltry at best. The person I wrote and stayed in contact with most was my aunt, which proves that I can do it and so all excuses vanish.

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This past weekend (as I'm writing this), our family gathered to honor my aunt at a celebration of her life, and though we were not able to attend in person, my cousin Dave made it possible for us to be there via the wonders of the Internet. Micki and me, Pop Bare, and my brother watched from different states as our first and second cousins told stories and celebrated the remarkable woman that she was. We wanted to be there in person. We would have been, had things been different, but too many intersecting contingencies prevented it at home. Nonetheless, it was a moving and lovely experience. I’m so glad we were able to witness it.

It was also wonderful to see the family and hear their tributes. As the hour of the digital visit neared its end, my other aunt’s eldest cousin rose and spoke. It was the first time I had seen her in the Internet Age’s version of “in person” in many decades. As she paid her tribute, I began to understand that she had valued and been close to our aunt, similarly to me. She had been an elder counselor, a support structure, and a valued provider of context for the Bare family, its eccentricities, historical realities, and lore. My cousin then ended with a potent suggestion. Maybe we shouldn’t wait for the next funeral before we all get together again, she said. Although my mic was on “mute”, I heartily “hear-heared”. 

Then it was over. The hour passed too quickly. As I packed up my laptop, I had a painful realization. For years, my aunt had been a point of connection for me to the family. History and memory, yes, but also to my cousins and their kids. For some of that time, too, among many other things, she reminded me that I was family despite being the youngest and living so far away. More than this, she stipulated that the responsibility was mine to reach out and connect and keep those connections open.

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In the Spring of 2017, during what would be our last visit, my aunt reminded me that there is nothing more important than family. While hanging out with her and my cousin and his family that weekend, I felt something truly eye-opening. Here were people with whom I had a genetic bond. The gestures, shapes, ways of thinking, and seeing the world weren’t just happenstance. This sense of connection is the basis of and the joy of family. We flew home, and I felt for the first time in a long time a growing understanding of the fact that I was a part of this group, regardless of how I’d felt throughout my life until then. 

As the years between then and now unfolded, I got better at keeping in touch with my aunt, who was always a call or email, or text away. She recommended books, critiqued my writing, encouraged Micki’s writing career, and was an avid cheerleader to us both in all things. Along with the amazing example that she lived in her own life, she was a deeply important source of family connection, as I’ve said, and that meant the world to me.

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It is an odd feeling to love and feel a connection with your close kin and yet feel so far from them at the same time. Family pride is something I feel keenly. And yet, life goes on, and we grow. Micki and I find ourselves in middle age with elderly parents. We have adult children, grandkids, busy jobs, and many of those damned pesky intersecting contingencies I mentioned before. John Lennon spoke sagely when he said that “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”. While this is certainly true, it actually makes me think that we need to work harder to keep the connections that matter to us in spite of the frenetic and hectic tendencies of daily life.

The night after the celebration of my aunt’s life, my mind spun like a squeaky merry-go-round at a school playground. I kept looping back to my cousin, saying that we needed to not wait to all get together soon. That next Sunday was spent shopping and preparing for visiting family, and putting up holiday lights, and as darkness fell and bedtime rolled around, again, my mind was racing as I lay there trying to sleep. It was in the wee hours, as I stood outside in the chill, waiting for our elderly pug to find the right spo,t that I formulated a plan.

My favorite aunt’s words resounded in my head. “You’re family. Get in contact and stay there.” At the risk of being pesty (though I’ll stop well short of that, I hope), I want to be a better cousin. While they too suffer the loss of a parent and aunt, I truly believe that we can help one another in the way that family is supposed to help. We can assuage our pain and loss. We can share stories. We can even—it is devoutly to be wished—all get together soon and be together as a family again. In this modern era of communication and connectivity, nothing is stopping me.

To my cousins, fellow grandchildren of our grandparents, bearers of our genetic heritage, I say, thank you. Thank you for being the coolest, smartest people a little kid ever knew, and thank you for setting an amazing example for me. I was, like you all, the first from our little branch to go to college and get out of Reading and expand my horizons with (so far) only one tentative trip abroad, but many more to come. 

We are family. Life continuously proves that it is too short to be remote with the people we care about. I ask that you forgive me for being lousy at communicating my affection for you over the years. I’m so lucky to be part of such an intelligent, good-looking (well, most of us), intensely funny, wonderfully eccentric group of grandkids, and even though I’m the youngest, farthest bookend all the way down the shelf, I’m proud to be of common heritage with you. You’ll be hearing from me soon, and I cannot wait to start new conversations with you. Think of all we can learn from each other. To me, it will be following the directive of my favorite and most admired aunt, but more than that, I hope it will help to fill the gap of her loss for all of us.

Here’s to her. Here’s to us. Here’s to family.

Operation Opera

Attached is a picture from the 1990s of the three vocalists from our band, called Walk in the Light. You may recognize at least one of these youthful hooligans as yours truly. Early in our high school careers, the three of us (from left: Lee Houtz, Josh Jeremiah, and me) were invited to local churches to sing. Of the three of us, Josh had the best voice by far and had spent his early years performing all over the place. We often referred to his vocal talents as “chocolatey goodness”. Quoting Jeeves’s review of Bertie’s voice, I could not truthfully say that Josh has a pleasant, light baritone, but rather that he can swoop down to the basso prufundo or up to the tenor with something like god-tier skill. 

Lee and I always knew that we were mere mortals next to this Apollo of vocal power. In later years, when we expanded our group to include guitars, bass, and drums, Josh and Lee took center stage, and I sat well back behind the kit and admired the incredible talent of our friend. We did many live shows and spent some time in the studio to create an album (well, a tape, really), and had a blast. However, like all good things, the band didn't survive Lee and me leaving for college in Indiana. That was nearly 30 years ago, now. Much water has traversed beneath the proverbial bridge.

Of the three of us, after graduation, Lee went on to get a job as a music minister for a small but growing church in Indiana. I wound up back in PA after the first year, where I taught myself to play guitar on top of the piano and drums, but I never ended up in the professional music field. More’s the pity. Josh had a year left to finish high school, but then he went to Shenandoah University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in voice and opera. Later, he attended the University of Cincinnati, where he earned both a Master’s Degree in voice and opera and also an Artist’s Degree in opera. He’s been on stage belting it out for most of his life, but although I had some sense that he was still melting audiences with his deep, rich baritone, we lost track after a while.

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I first met Josh while hanging out with his older brother, Jacob, when I lived in Schaefferstown. I can remember the three of us goofing around in Jake’s room, playing video games, and being boys. I had no sense of Josh’s voice, then. Once we got to middle school and started to audition for the chorus and select choir, all of us of a musical bent immediately understood that Josh was not like the rest of us. He was immensely fun to sing with, though, and I think it was around that time that Lee and I became friends, too. I have distinct memories of going into men’s rooms and stairwells, where the acoustics provided sustained echoes, and doing our version of impromptu Gregorian chants. It wouldn’t be long before the three of us started to understand that we had a gift for close harmony and could thrill the old ladies in the pews around us by singing three of the four parts written in most hymnals. The rest is history..

After his education, Josh’s voice carried him throughout the world and across many stages and through the portrayal of many characters. He’s tackled iconic roles like Rigoletto, Macbeth, and Escamillo, and starred in world premieres such as Riders of the Purple Sage and Persona. His versatility shines in everything from Verdi and Puccini to Rodgers and Hammerstein, and he’s worked for companies like Sacramento Philharmonic, New Orleans Opera, Arizona Opera, and Minnesota Opera. Beyond opera, he’s performed with major symphony orchestras and at venues like Alice Tully Hall. He’s also a former Young Artist with the Seattle and Cincinnati Operas, blending classical baritone depth with his well-known and charismatic stage presence. His CV is mighty, and he definitely has the chops to back it up.

I lost contact with Josh between moving to NC in 2001 and 2011, when Facebook and Twitter allowed many former school friends to reconnect on social media. We connected briefly, sharing stories, pictures, and commenting on one another’s posts. After the Facebook thing got old with me, I lost track again, until last week when Josh reached out to me. We chatted about this and that and asked about each other’s families and marveled at how many years had passed. Then he told me that he would be in our neck of the woods and asked if we’d like tickets to see him perform in Pagliacci in Winston-Salem over the weekend. Honored and struck by his generosity, we of course said yes.

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Micki and I are adventurous. We like to do new things together, and the spontaneity of getting free opera tickets fits well with our tendency to try the unexpected. Throughout the day of the opera, Micki would pause writing to ask me questions about Josh, how I knew him, etc. As I paid out a length of memories to her, I realized more and more keenly how long it had been since Josh and I had met or spoken. I was in a thoughtful mood, therefore, as we donned our fancy duds and headed up the road to Winston-Salem.

Micki and I are now old hands at going to shows. We’ve had season tickets to the Broadway shows offered by the Tanger Center for one and a half seasons, so we are familiar with getting dressed up, heading to a venue, queuing through security, getting a snack and a drink, and then following a sherpa to our nosebleed seats so we can squint at that week’s Broadway masterpiece. Going to the opera presented only one or two minor differences.

First, of course, we were headed to Winston, not Greensboro, and the venue wasn’t a theatre so much as an event center venue that had once been a post office. So, as we parked and strode to the next block, the long lines of tuxedoed men and gowned women I was expecting were not evident. In fact, there was only one man in a tux, but he merely welcomed us in and let us wander the foyers. We eventually found signs informing us of a “pre-show opera talk” near a drinks counter, and so I got us refreshments, and we sat in the art-deco space, took selfies, and frowned a bit at how sparsely attended the whole thing appeared to be.

Soon enough, it became obvious that the talk was starting, so we went into a dark, but garishly lit side room, where two volunteers filled bags with popcorn and a raspy-voiced history professor from Wake Forest tried to tell us about Pagliacci in a reedy squeak that was, despite its presence nearby, apparently allergic to the microphone at his elbow. We soon departed. However, we had done some research leading up to the night and had a sense of what to expect.

Pagliacci, Ruggero Leoncavallo’s searing 1892 masterpiece of Italian verismo—a style of operatic realism which was exceedingly popular in its time—spins a taut tale where the performers’ painted faces barely conceal the raw pain beneath. Leoncavallo, a composer and librettist from Naples, penned both words and music, drawing from a real-life crime and crafting an opera whose brutal honesty, iconic tenor aria  “Vesti la giubba,” made popular in films like The Untouchables, and blending of tragic violence and fleeting dark humor earned it instant and lasting acclaim after its Milan premiere under Toscanini’s baton. 

Pagliacci starts off with Tonio (as played by my old friend, Josh) breaking the fourth wall, warning us that this isn’t just a show—it’s raw, bleeding edge of real life. Act I then commences with the comedy troupe setting up in a tiny village where jealousy bubbles—Canio’s wife, Nedda, is sneaking around with Silvio, and Canio’s suspicions tear him up inside. Act II blurs the lines completely: the play within the opera becomes real violence as Canio, crushed by betrayal, stabs Nedda and Silvio right on stage, ending with that chilling line, “The comedy is over,” or,  “La commedia è finita!” before taking his own life. It’s brutal, tragic, and unforgettable—just like life—wrapped in a fierce, intense music that cuts straight to the heart. The opera’s theatrical self-awareness and gut-punch conclusion have cemented its place as the defining achievement of Leoncavallo’s career and one of the most enduring works in the operatic canon. 

More than this operatic masterpiece, though, was a deeper level of realization as Josh, playing the brutish and deformed Tonio, comes out onto the stage after a brief overture and sings the prologue. I had a pang and said, perhaps too loudly for the comfort of those sitting near us, “That’s him!” With tears in my eyes, not just because of his powerful, warm, dark voice dripping with unearthly resonance and pathos of the character and words, but because here was a friend that I had known since my disheveled boyhood, who knew my roots and remembered a younger version of myself from before the life of the writer took a weirdly Dickensian turn. Like a memory come to life, this person with whom I had spent so many hours singing and performing was suddenly there, large as life. The memories and the realization of the time that has already passed added to the poignance of the opera.

After the opera, we waited near the cast and crew entrance, hoping that he would find us as promised. Families and patrons of the Piedmont Opera came and hugged their loved ones and took selfies with the performers. We waited, and I felt a sincere excitement and longing to see my very old friend. Then, the curtain parted, and there he was, no longer in the white and greasepaint of the second act, but in a dapper sport coat and fancy shirt. His long, very curly hair was pulled up in a knot. As he approached, I saw how larger than life he was, towering over my 6’3’’ frame. He grabbed me and we hugged, and then I introduced him to Micki. She had the presence of mind to ask someone nearby to take a picture of the three of us, included below. Actually, it was the tenor who had played Canio, and he appeared a little chagrinned that he had been relegated to photographer after his magnificent performance as an emotionally wrecked clown, but he will forgive us, knowing that it had been 30 years since two of the three in the photo had seen one another.

Josh had to dash, sadly, going to a fundraiser event after, but we spoke for ten minutes, reliving memories, sharing updates, catching Micki up on names and details. He hasn’t changed a bit. He still has a deep, thunderous voice, a magnificent sense of humor, and a generous and sincere disposition. Micki liked him immediately, as most people do. We parted company and then we made our way to a local Irish pub to feed ourselves, before heading back home. As we walked back to the parking garage, we saw him again and spoke for a few more moments before parting.

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I’ve made very few friends from that part of my life with whom I have stayed connected, except Lee Houtz. As my very best childhood friend, Lee and I have drifted, but we’re also prone to send birthday texts and warm wishes at the holidays or randomly talk about football or music. This is how things go. We grow, we move, we build our lives in other places and with other people. It is true that some who graduated from Asheboro High School years ago still live and work and meet one another all these years later, and that may be true of some of my former classmates, in PA, as well. For me, though, because I pulled up stakes and moved to the South, I lost connection with people who had been of incredible importance to me in the formative years of my life.

This past weekend, I got to see and spend an all-too-short time with one of the most talented and genuine people I have ever known, and I count myself fortunate to have had the opportunity. If you’re reading this and you ever have the chance to see an opera or show with Josh Jeremiah performing, trust me, do everything you can to not miss it. You won’t regret it. 

To Josh, I say, thank you, my friend. The flood of memories, the chance to hear you sing again, and the adventure of going to the opera were a lovely gift. It was great to be in your presence again, if only briefly. Here’s to old times!

The Importance of Family Storytelling

 The Importance of Family Storytelling

Author’s Note: In mid-October, my Good Aunt passed away after a rather long and debilitating struggle at the venerable age of 91. I am devastated by her loss. She lived an amazing, adventurous, and fearless life, galavanting all over the world, from the Holy Land, where she swam in the Dead Sea, to Antarctica, and beyond. She was a writer, a family historian, a singer, a seamstress, an actor, a poet, a cook, and a baker. To me, she was the one person on the Bare side of my family with whom I felt a real connection, not just as an aunt and nephew, but as someone with whom I had a great deal in common. She was a kindred spirit and someone who seemed to understand the specific challenges I had, feeling like the black sheep for most of my life.

Over the years, we racked up quite a pile of correspondence, in letters and cards, emails, texts, and the occasional calls. She often reviewed and critiqued my short stories or challenged me to finally write a “whole damn novel”. She helped me to understand and appreciate our family’s history, filling in details and sharing with me points of connection with our ancestors that I wouldn’t otherwise have had. When I wrote a poem about building a fire using traditional skills with our middle son, she basically ordered me to share it with any poetry periodical I could, which I did, to no avail, but I’m not disappointed that I tried. 

More than anything, though, she cemented in me the importance of telling stories. Not just the scary fictional ones, but the important tales of one’s family, especially to the newer generations. So it is that I dedicate this essay to my Aunt Jayne, who was a friend and a support and a heroine of mine, and whose memory I will carry with me and whose story I will share.

My maternal grandfather was something of a hero. Over the years of my development from a child to a young adult, I heard many tales from many different people about him. Combined with pictures that I have from the family albums, this oral compendium of stories and visuals helped me to create a solid human from the memories of others. I can think of him and refer to him and even share tales about him, having never met the man myself. This is the power and the importance of storytelling.

Daniel D. Swavely Sr. died in 1965 at age 55 from an aneurysm that was a complication of an earlier incident. While riding a horse, the animal reared and slipped and fell back on him, badly injuring his genitals, breaking ribs, and his arm. Several months later, complaining of a headache, he slipped into unconsciousness, and two days after that, he died. My brother was one year old; I wouldn’t come around for another decade or so. My mother was twenty-six years old.

Everything that I know about Grandpop Swavely comes from oral history shared with me by my mother, grandmother, Uncle Dan, and Pop Bare. Their tales wove together to form a thin, but still tangible specter of the man I would never meet. From an early age, I was very interested in learning about him, so I asked questions about him and internalized everything. Other times, though, I was given breadcrumbs about him through regular family interactions. While upset with me about something, my mother would say, “My father would never have put up with this.” All of it came together in a way that made me understand that, even though I had never met him, I still understood him and knew him as well as I could.

My mother, Uncle Dan, and my Nana are all gone now. The only people who remember him are my brother, Pop Bare, and me. When I see his picture in our living room, I am grateful for the opportunity to be his grandson despite never knowing him. His life, his genetics, and his name all form part of who I am. With the tales told about him, I feel very fortunate that my family took sharing details about his life so seriously. It was a gift of incredible proportions.

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When my father-in-law died, we were crushed. Especially, though, I felt a pang for our young sons. They were very much closer to him, both in nature and in looks, than they understood, but Micki worked hard to make sure that she told stories to them about their grandfather and always pointed out when they were behaving like he did. One of the tropes in our family is to call the boys “Gary” when they act like he would have in a similar situation. I knew him for less than a decade, but we were close, and I was so grateful for his role in all of our lives. I’m glad the boys knew him. They were young when he passed, so it was important to make sure they understood the man their grandfather was in life.

Similarly, almost by habit, I tell them about Pop Bare, with whom they spent less time, sadly, but who is no less important in understanding me. Though they do not share genetic bonds with me or the Bare family, the people who formed the foundation of my life are just as important to them in understanding me and my “side” of the family. 

Sharing tales can provide context, but it also broadens and deepens our connections. The boys never met my mother, but they knew Uncle Dan. Stories we’ve told and experiences they’ve shared with us have given them a perspective about the people who came before. Someday, I’ll be gone, and they will wonder, as I often have, about my family history or their mother’s ancestors, and because we have always been intentional about sharing important stories and details, I think they won’t lack much in piecing together the people that defined us.

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Sadly, I think that family storytelling is a habit of the previous generations that hasn’t transferred to the modern moment. I hope I’m wrong about this. Genealogical help is far more available and, in many cases, as in our library, free these days. This means that anyone can come to the library and start the process of finding out about their history. Like many of our online resources, though, just because they’re freely available doesn’t mean that people understand or even want to make use of them. In fact, one of our challenges has always been getting the public to understand that we offer more than just books.

I couldn’t imagine not knowing about my family, but I suspect that for some, sharing family history is not a priority. My family’s maternal and paternal sides are natural storytellers, and there is a historical bent on both sides. My father’s uncle and my good aunt did a lot of work to compile the family histories, too, so I had a lot to work with. It was worrying to think that there are families out there that have not been sharing stories, or that there are young people who just aren’t interested in knowing. 

I have to acknowledge that part of this is that some people don’t really care about history and genealogy. I’m not trying to sound old, but the social platforms provide a lot of distractions that are hard to ignore. It may not be something that interests them. I thought every family had at least one person who had to collect and save family histories, but I may be wrong. My experience might not be universal.

I spent many evenings at both grandmothers’ tables, eating homemade pies and drinking milked-down coffee, listening to my family regale one another with tales of people from all the way back. Legends that they both told me, or that my parents and their siblings shared, formed not only the basis of the family history I hold dear but also gave me a sense of where I fit in the whole skein. 

Recently, while speaking to my eldest cousin, I was momentarily caught by how much time had gone by since we’d seen each other. I’m the youngest of the grandchildren, so he’s twenty years my senior. He quipped in response to my astonishment, “I know how old you are. I was there when you were born.” That tiny bit of history filled me with a particularly Bare sense of connection, because it gave me one more thread to weave into the tapestry, sharing context and reinforcing that I’m actually a member of my family.

I have always struggled a bit with that feeling of belonging and connection. I’m not adopted or estranged from my family, per se, but I did spend a good portion of my adolescence feeling as though the people to whom I belonged didn’t see me as family. In fact, for most of my life, because of my age and the distance I lived from my cousins, especially, I always felt alienated. When they would visit Pennsylvania, or when, on the rare times we visited them, I absolutely relished the sense of connection that I felt. These are people who had the same grandparents as me after all. They had 50 percent of my heritage. Pop Bare’s sisters are older, so their kids are all older, but even so, these were the people with whom I shared family resemblance, facial features, body shapes, gestures, and ways of thinking and seeing the world that were not odd or weird, but quite common in our lineage.

Like the pictures of my late maternal grandfather, these similarities helped me to build a sense of belonging and connection that are so important to me. They wouldn’t exist without the stories that we tell one another about our family, our heritage, and the way we fit into those tales. 

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Part of the reason that I write these essays for DRO is so that there is a record, not just of what I think, but also of stories that I have told about my experiences, my family, my heritage, and my ancestors. Although we can’t sit around the table with my grandparents anymore, and most of us live many hours away, our connection with one another may be strained by distance and life, but at least it isn’t nonexistent. We have context. We have a connection. We have a sense of shared history, and we understand the tapestry of our family’s stories.

Someday, this page will go dark. Maybe I will have stopped writing, or will no longer be able to put two coherent thoughts together. For my kids and theirs, I want there to be a place where they can go to read what I thought and learn about who I was. Along with the many pictures of me that they may wish to look at, it may help them build a picture in their mind of who I was, the things that mattered to me, the topics that interested me, my strengths and weaknesses. And maybe, as I have done, they will tell stories about me, referencing tales that they heard told about me by Micki or the boys, or our many nieces and nephews, that help to make me real for them in the same way.

As I wrote this essay, though, it occurred to me that the most important way that most people learn is through behavior modeled in the home. Ironically, this works with positive and negative behavior. There is something to be said for starting new traditions. A few years ago, a “family-oriented” ad campaign challenged busy families to take time to sit at dinner and talk. Although this seemed somewhat hokey at the time, it nevertheless proved something that I also learned in my youth: unless we take the time to talk with our kids and tell them the family tales, then there is no way they can either develop a love for them or understand the importance of them.

In a few weeks (as I write this), we are looking forward to family coming for the Thanksgiving Holiday. It will be a perfect time to not only share some family stories, but also, with a new generation, introduce them to the family in a way that I hope will fill them with a sense of belonging and position and interest to know more about our vast, ever-changing family.