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Oh my family’s pretty normal Dona. Normal is a range. We’re well inside of the range. Sure there are odd things about a couple of people, but overall we’re just a bunch of normal people doing normal stuff out there in the world. I would think about it the other way around – I’m not sure how many people I know who are from abmnormal families. Can’t think of anyone actually. Rob maybe? Tha’s about it.
Well, Lech, at least you are talking….there may actually be some families that are like the Waltons. I don’t think I know any though. My cousin has this poster of a single person sitting in a huge auditorium of folding chairs and the title over the poster is THE ANNUAL CONVENTION OF PEOPLE FROM NORMAL FAMILIES.
Dona I wouldn’t even consider taking my kids to Oz to visit her. Geography isn’t the problem. She’ll occasionally call from JFK on her way through from Hawaii (her regular home) to some random place, and we’ll chat as if it’s not weird at all that she’s in NYC and not visiting and she hasn’t ever bothered to actually meet two of my kids. Well I guess she “met” the second kid when he was in utero and we visited her in Hawaii and she busted out an ultrasound machine she had sitting around home. When she’s in Hawaii she always calls on Sundays to chat for a bit. We have a mutually agreed detente where I don’t get up in her grill for being a fruitcake when we chat and she sticks to reasonably safe topics. She always has the same hippie dippie routine about how she just picked the most wonderful fresh coffee from her backyard coffee plants, and her garden just looks so great, and she saved some woman’s life when she did an emergency c-section last night, and I’m like “uh huh…. uh huh…. OK bye.”
Wow, Western Australia is a definate geographical challenge. I have never been to Australia. I have friends in Brisbane (now dealing with major flooding). But that is not an easy place to visit – 24 hours on a plane is not what you want to do with small kids.
if Lech was the oldest, they might’ve stopped with him as he would’ve been handful enough to deal with
“The great thing about having a big family is, assuming that you all get along (and that takes some effort) is that you have a deep net of relationships your whole life.”
I completely agree with this. I have great relationships with all of my siblings. In a lot of ways my relationships with my siblings are becoming a foundation, sort of like what parents are for kids.
“your mother, the doctor, having all those kids and being a doctor. wow. Great.”
Yeah I guess but only 5 are hers and like I said she’s actually pretty unhinged in a lot of ways. She just moved to a small town in Western Australia for a couple of years, kind of randomly. She’s never met two of my kids.
The great thing about having a big family is, assuming that you all get along (and that takes some effort) is that you have a deep net of relationships your whole life.
I love having a big family even though some of the people are sort of high maintenance.
In recent years, I’ve had two positions that afforded me the opportunity to go into alot of neighbors’ homes.
The first was when I lived in Gravesend. I was an organizer of our block party, and one of the jobs I had to do was to hang pennants across the street. I did this by going into the top-floor apartments and tying them to the window mullions.
The second opportunity was in my present condo. I was the president of the board when we first moved in and had alot of issues.
In both cases, the thing that struck me was HOW MUCH STUFF people have in their homes. Folks really clutter up their lives these days.
I mentioned this to Donatella and Montrose on our recent tour. When I was researching my family history, I looked up the 1939 tax photos of the buildings in which they lived. What struck me when going through the photos was how neat and uncluttered everything was, including the tenement on Sullivan Street in Red Hook where my grandparents first lived when they came to this country- no overflowing garbage cans in front, everything neat as a pin.
Folks would do well to go on a diet, and I’m not just talking about food.