Family Values

     On a recent trip I passed near a site of boyhood memories. Today it is an urban green space. Back then it was the county park where my mother's family gathered under picnic shelters for their annual reunions. Passing it put me in mind of so-called family values.
     The Internet tells me that family  reunions are nowadays an artifact of lifestyles -- something one chooses to do, in a larger sense of the word, as one would choose to garden heirloom tomatoes or learn French. Links offer expert planning guides. (Mr. Spiffy is especially detailed in his advice.) Magazines recommend "steps to family reunion success." (Create a command center; start with a bang.)
     Our long-ago reunions were less grand. My experience of them featured sweat, stinging insects, acres of jello salad, and boredom triggered by the ritualized patter of the most ardent attendees. I remember inwardly critiquing them with the self-focused literalism of a 10-year-old: Yes, of course I'm still Mildred's boy; yes, of course I've grown.
     I learned to duck the sweet, matronly cousin who always opened with, You don't remember me do you?  I did remember her, just not the name she forced me to tease out of her year after year. Only in adulthood did I tumble to the code embedded in the annual appraisals of my grandfather's unmarried, middle-aged sister: Ida is really sweet, I'm sure. She just hasn't met the right man yet.
     My mother's forebears were yeomen of the rural South, sun-seasoned and corded with the muscle of farm labor, man and woman alike. Only in her generation did some of them begin moving to town and taking indoor jobs. Only in my generation did any of us think of going to college, or moving to live in distant places.
     Our family was not different from others. We had angels and scoundrels, charmers and boors.
     We had my grandmother, who defied the customs of segregation and went to live in her black housekeeper's husbandless shack when the woman was ill, to nurse her and care for her children.
     We had a great-uncle who now and then climbed to the attic with a shotgun and a jug of white lightning, and dared anyone to bother him before he  finished his bender.
     We had spouses who cheated and spouses who spent body and, yes, soul to sustain a proper home.
     We had achievers and ne'er do wells, exemplars and black sheep.
     As a boy I wondered why my folks wanted an annual gathering that required of them so much tiptoeing around hard differences and old hurts. As a man I better understand.  The journey was long from the tobacco field to the classroom and the desk job, and they were all in it together. That was the backbone of things. If some trifled with the basics, everyone knew what they were.
    Beyond the particulars of my family's situation, the larger point is this: For them, the foremost family values were affirmation and inclusion that transcended differences.  Disappointment in a son did not forestall wanting an occasion to display pride in a nephew. If my grandmother grieved over her drunken brother's willingness to frighten his family, she could nonetheless once a year share fried chicken and pecan pie, and in this way affirm that even that little bit of sharing mattered. With their annual appraisals of Aunt Ida, those farm matrons in their flower print dresses were affirming to each other that they knew she was a lesbian but loved her anyway.
     Flash forward to now, and hear family values defined in terms far removed from affirmation. Hear that family values are inconsistent with single parenthood, gay marriage and a woman's private control of her own body. Family values are against this, against that, against the other. Family values are defined by what -- and whom -- they oppose.
     Within this message is at best a hollow core, and more often a crabbed and narrow view of love, not to mention human decency.  I believe that my relatives of yesteryear would be surprised to hear exclusion celebrated in the name of family. I don't know all they might think, say, of the openly homosexual couples among my friends who are marvelous spouses and excellent parents. I do know that they would respect the spousal commitment, the parenthood, and my friendship.
     My relatives were taught by hard lives to discern essentials.  They would see through the politicians and ambitious clerics who nowadays claim to embrace family for the purpose of aggrandizing themselves. My grandmother, who never in my hearing uttered a hard word, would not stoop to use the vocabulary necessary to call them what they are. She would clear her throat and change the subject. It was her ultimate dismissal.
     My grandmother's approval was a dear thing to the many who loved and admired her. For my own part I miss her -- but I do sometimes reflect that it's just as well she's not around to be pained by my enduring dislike of jello salad.