Embracing the Tree

So the family reunion/party thing turned out to be sort of amazingly wonderful. I really appreciated the comments to my last rather melancholy post. I wasn’t suffering horribly, I was just having my buttons pushed, as they say. As is very prone to happen when it’s birthday season.

I think that things like family trees and, er, birthdays, can be very fraught for adoptees. At least they are for me. Normally I like to Do Something very active, some new skill or activity, on my birthday, which I think is a way of keeping myself busy in a positive way. Last year I threw a collage-art day, and once I learned to sea-kayak, and once I took a little class in making paper by hand. I didn’t do that today, and I feel all the extra emotions like static around my heart. I DID have a wonderful and delicious lunch with a good good friend whom I really needed to catch up with, and I’ve received a raft of loving emails, phone calls and messages (not to mention a birthday shark for my Facebook Aquarium!). I am now regretting that I chickened out on my original idea to ask the same friend if her dad would teach me a little something on the banjo (yeah, in one day!). That seemed sort of silly and unrealistic so I opted for lunch instead (mmm crabcakes).

So. Back to the reunion. It was a loooong (almost twelve hours) and lovely day. The cousins needed something to Do, so my daughter and her cousins made a several-hour project out of compiling the Family Tree and adding some construction-paper leaves for dear friends in attendance. They were busily occupied for much of the afternoon, and when it was done, they wrapped it around a real tree and the partygoers gathered around to add or correct, to sign a leaf, to just stand there and gaze at it.

That piece of cardboard had a profound effect. I’ve always been phobic of family trees; they upset me on a really deep level. I’d sort of peek at them, longingly, in books (my favorite is the one in Little, Big, where I first noticed that “illegitimate” children were connected by dotted instead of solid lines). But they’re the kind of things I’d peek at between my fingers.

This family tree was – I don’t know, different. For one, I felt firmly and irrevocably a part of its branches. I saw my name along with all the others, and it just felt good. My mother’s name was on there, too. (they wanted to be sure to include everyone who was AT the party, and several others)

It had a big effect on my kids, too. For one thing, they had a real identity and a place of honor as the Grand-Nieces (there are six of them; two from each family). As they worked on the tree, each cousin researching or writing or coloring in a different part, connections became clear that they’d never understood before. I could see them visibly – it’s hard to describe this – but, solidifying somehow as the project evolved. They could look around the vast yard full of people and then down at the chart and see – oh wow, those women that all look the same? They’re sisters. They’re our dad’s cousins. Ohhhhh.

It was also really startling, quite striking and moving and a little heart-tweaking to see all those people who looked crazily similar, almost identical in some instances. A few times my husband did a double-take, thinking his aunt was his mom. (his mom has been gone a long time) I kept staring at our kids’ cousins: they really are from the same batch. There is a particular Look that is so recognizable and I kept seeing it over and over. That was, er, trippy.

It’s a really special and amazing family to be part of. Yes, as someone commented before, people were on their best behavior. It was a celebratory event. But these are genuinely good, loving people, who were SO delighted to see each other, and us, and frankly ecstatic to meet some of their relatives for the first time (my husband met a first cousin for the first time in his life, and it was a really happy meeting). I felt genuinely welcomed and really, really Part of It All. (this is not a familiar feeling) The day was filled with exclaiming and hugging and embracing and picture-taking and just good feelings. Believe me, this doesn’t happen at ALL family gatherings. When we finally left, way after dark, after seeing and catching her very first fireflies, my younger daughter reluctantly gathered up her shoes and waved goodbye. “Bye, family.” She said it two times, and I could feel how she really had internalized it in a big way. These people are all her family.

Well, this post is getting very long, and the little family is waiting to go to birthday dinner, so the rest will have to wait. Next post: The agony and ecstasy of Ancestry.com.