Connections: Roots
My cousin Harriet tries to keep her father’s side of the family together even though she lives in Dallas and most of the relatives live on the East Coast. On Sunday, it had been nine years since a dozen of us sat down together. The nice thing is we all are alive and well, although one first cousin doesn’t leave her house anymore. Her granddaughter, a native of Israel who lives in Queens, visits her in New Jersey once a week by subway, bus, and a mile-long walk. That’s an expression of family affection that I bet few can match.
As we enjoyed brunch in a New York City restaurant, I found myself musing on what the members of extended families mean to each other. We went around the table bringing each other up to date. But something else was almost tangible. In our case, we share the knowledge that those who came before us, men and women who immigrated to this country before World War II, made our lives possible. What a distance we have traveled.
Given how American families are known for dispersing, generation after generation, it seemed big that some of ours could be together even if our number was small. How close we are can be gleaned from the fact that on Sunday there were two Harriets and two Philips at the table.
Harriet from Dallas is my father’s brother Sam’s daughter — she and my father were niece and uncle. I never knew my father’s parents, my paternal grandparents. We talked about how my father and Harriet’s parents were born on Clinton Street in Manhattan. I can’t imagine what they would think of that hip neighborhood today.
My mother’s parents, whom I did know and loved, had attended meetings of a group of immigrants who had come to this country as they did at the beginning of the 20th century from the same part of Europe. In my grandparents’ case it was Bessarabia, now Moldova, after an infamous pogrom in Kishinev. How terribly meaningful the society of their old, surviving friends must have been.
Recent polls have found churchgoing in this country on the decline. I think that is unfortunate since our religious institutions are often bedrocks of concern and compassion for others. And if the family is dispersed and the church is no longer important, one relies on friends for everything — for solace or support or congratulations when they are due.
A recent opinion piece in The New York Times described a coterie of young married mothers who live on New York’s Upper East Side, painting an unattractive picture of privileged but hardly powerful women who bond over what money buys them. Church wasn’t mentioned, and nothing was said about their extended families. To me, that seems like a kind of poverty.