lengthy texts (perhaps even including passages from Dr. Raymond L. Ditmars), and when Roger, still at home, reports that Humphrey has eye issues, Kim is back in three minutes with the email address of a herpetologist hotline in California, plus another site offering harm-free, environmentally O.K. plans and dimensions for the caging of unthreatened native constrictor species. The story's the same but where's the action?
We Are Fam-ilee
"W E are fam-ilee," the great old Sister Sledge single went, and then the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates swiped it and made it their own, riding that beat all the way into the World Series and winning with it, of course. Anyone who was there still can see the Pirate player wives, in their full-length October furs and coats, kicking and boogeying together to the song, arm-in-arm on the home-team dugout roof. Who doesn't want to be fam-ilee? Let's start counting, just for fun. There is mine and yours and also the Kennedys and the Cosbys, the Cabots, the Bushes, the bin Ladens, the Roosevelts, the Alous, the Osbournes, the Barrymores, the Brontës, the Marx Brothers, the Jameses (William and Henry), and the Jameses (Jesse and Frank). Also the Gambinos, the Medicis, the Adamses, and the Addamses. The Guermantes. The Bachs, the Windsors, the Wallendas. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. and Jr.; Sherlock and Mycroft
Holmes. Saltonstalls and Pallisers, Fondas and Stuarts. The Bobbseys, the Romanoffs, and die Strausses Johann the Elder, Johann the Younger, Richard, and Levi. The Capets and the Capulets and, yes, the Carters. Jimmy and Rosalynn and Amy and Billy Carter; A. P., June, Maybelle, Helen, and Anita Carter; Gary Carter. Andrew Jackson. Michael, Jermaine, Jackie, Marlon, Tito, La Toya, and Janet Jackson. Stonewall Jackson. Reggie Jackson. Donald Duck; Huey, Dewey & Louie Duck. The Sopranos.
In my early teens, I was startled to learn that a new friend of mine, Fred Parson, had five brothers, and that his father, Ken, whom I also knew, had also grown up as one of six brothers. Now there's a
family,
I thought. I had started with zero brothers and one lone sister. My divorced parents weren't much better off, with my mother being the youngest of three sisters, and my father having had to make do with one younger sister. Thin pickings. True, my mother and stepfather had a son now, Joel, who was still too young to be much fun but would perhaps become a brother down the line. I was dying for relations. For me, aunts and uncles were like the secondary characters you looked for in a good book or a movie: you wanted plenty of them, for color and action and to represent the full spectrum of oddity. A woman I know has told me that a departed great aunt of hers on East Sixty-second Street had been the long-term mistress of the celebrated Metropolitan Opera tenor Giovanni Martinelliâexactly the kind of news my family lacked. With the self-pity of the young, I had observed the slim branches on my tree and seen a
poplar. But I was wrong. I hadn't appreciated the relatives I'd been given, and I was not yet aware of the generative powers of American divorce.
Looking at my family now, I note that there have been eleven (or sixteen, counting another way) divorces, spread across three generationsâmore than enough for a soap, and not what its members would have invented for themselves as children. But we cannot now unimagine the new fathers and step-aunts and half-brothers or sisters and half-grandnieces that sit around the family tables on a Thanksgiving, or wish a life for ourselves that did not include unexpected attachments. In this story, a man is approached by a man he has known for forty years, who says, "Guess what. We have the same fatherâI'm your brother. No wonder I could always beat you at singles." On another day, a new baby, a wonderful son, is baptized simultaneously in ten or eleven different rites, including the Yoruba. Four years later, the friend who thought of this caper, a minister, and
We Are Fam-ilee
"W E are fam-ilee," the great old Sister Sledge single went, and then the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates swiped it and made it their own, riding that beat all the way into the World Series and winning with it, of course. Anyone who was there still can see the Pirate player wives, in their full-length October furs and coats, kicking and boogeying together to the song, arm-in-arm on the home-team dugout roof. Who doesn't want to be fam-ilee? Let's start counting, just for fun. There is mine and yours and also the Kennedys and the Cosbys, the Cabots, the Bushes, the bin Ladens, the Roosevelts, the Alous, the Osbournes, the Barrymores, the Brontës, the Marx Brothers, the Jameses (William and Henry), and the Jameses (Jesse and Frank). Also the Gambinos, the Medicis, the Adamses, and the Addamses. The Guermantes. The Bachs, the Windsors, the Wallendas. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. and Jr.; Sherlock and Mycroft
Holmes. Saltonstalls and Pallisers, Fondas and Stuarts. The Bobbseys, the Romanoffs, and die Strausses Johann the Elder, Johann the Younger, Richard, and Levi. The Capets and the Capulets and, yes, the Carters. Jimmy and Rosalynn and Amy and Billy Carter; A. P., June, Maybelle, Helen, and Anita Carter; Gary Carter. Andrew Jackson. Michael, Jermaine, Jackie, Marlon, Tito, La Toya, and Janet Jackson. Stonewall Jackson. Reggie Jackson. Donald Duck; Huey, Dewey & Louie Duck. The Sopranos.
In my early teens, I was startled to learn that a new friend of mine, Fred Parson, had five brothers, and that his father, Ken, whom I also knew, had also grown up as one of six brothers. Now there's a
family,
I thought. I had started with zero brothers and one lone sister. My divorced parents weren't much better off, with my mother being the youngest of three sisters, and my father having had to make do with one younger sister. Thin pickings. True, my mother and stepfather had a son now, Joel, who was still too young to be much fun but would perhaps become a brother down the line. I was dying for relations. For me, aunts and uncles were like the secondary characters you looked for in a good book or a movie: you wanted plenty of them, for color and action and to represent the full spectrum of oddity. A woman I know has told me that a departed great aunt of hers on East Sixty-second Street had been the long-term mistress of the celebrated Metropolitan Opera tenor Giovanni Martinelliâexactly the kind of news my family lacked. With the self-pity of the young, I had observed the slim branches on my tree and seen a
poplar. But I was wrong. I hadn't appreciated the relatives I'd been given, and I was not yet aware of the generative powers of American divorce.
Looking at my family now, I note that there have been eleven (or sixteen, counting another way) divorces, spread across three generationsâmore than enough for a soap, and not what its members would have invented for themselves as children. But we cannot now unimagine the new fathers and step-aunts and half-brothers or sisters and half-grandnieces that sit around the family tables on a Thanksgiving, or wish a life for ourselves that did not include unexpected attachments. In this story, a man is approached by a man he has known for forty years, who says, "Guess what. We have the same fatherâI'm your brother. No wonder I could always beat you at singles." On another day, a new baby, a wonderful son, is baptized simultaneously in ten or eleven different rites, including the Yoruba. Four years later, the friend who thought of this caper, a minister, and
Similar Books
