Reinventing Family Celebrations

Quick Visits, Lasting Memories

Cousins meeting for the first time at a family party in 2007.

Families gather for graduations, weddings, funerals, milestone birthdays and reunions. I love big family celebrations and have hosted many over the years. There’s magic to an impromptu smaller family gathering and I experienced it three times this week. I discovered the intimacy of having a family conversation and not a production. It is more relaxing, less expensive, and more feasible as we age to have small family gatherings.

My family dynamics are a patchwork quilt resulting from individual decisions made by others before I was born. After living in California, Arizona, and spending the last thirty-one years in suburban Indianapolis, I appreciate the impact “place” has on family.

Coming of age in 1960s and 1970s Chicagoland influenced me. My entire family was influenced by the South Suburbs with its steel mills, the melting pot of residents, and our proximity to downtown. The Midwestern values of hard work, a ‘can-do’ attitude, lending a helping hand, and the pursuit of an education to improve your lot in life define our family values. We also celebrate achievements in a big way! Now my family lives all over the country, and we take our Midwestern upbringing with us.

Uncle Wayne with me and Dr. Deirdre at Shapiro’s Deli in downtown Indianapolis.

Not everyone has a close biological family connection. One of my friends was the only child of two “only” children. She marveled at my dozens of cousins, aunts, and uncles who were more like older siblings. She questioned how I could have three grandfathers, and how spry my octogenarian and nonagenarian relatives were mentally and physically. She created a family from her spouse’s relatives and friends she chose as family. There’s a quote that includes, “Family isn’t always blood. It’s the people in your life who want you in theirs…”

In addition to my biological family, I have a ‘bonus family’ that lived across the street in Illinois since third grade. One of their children born on my birthday, shares my middle name. In 1993 when I moved to Indy, my ‘bonus family’ was living here for over a decade. They promised my mom, they would look out for me and my 2-year-old son (and they did). All these years later, the parents live out-of-state near their biological children and we stay in contact. Their family is an extension of my own.

This week my cousin was in Indianapolis for the 2024 Zeta Phi Beta Grand Boulé and brought my aunt along to visit our family here. They marveled at how the city had changed since their last visit fifteen years ago. Another aunt and uncle drove from Illinois for a quick overnight visit. The next day I texted my cousins in Dayton and a few hours later, four generations of family, from 11 years old to 84 years old, watched the Paris Olympics, flipped through photo albums, and watched videos of relatives no longer with us. We laughed, we ate, we shared family stories and we made memories in our Midwestern way.

An impromptu gathering. Three hours together in 2024, we will remember fondly.