Family Values or Valuing Family?

In these modern times where the idea of family values is more a political stumping point or a buzz word of little real intrinsic value, there was a time when it meant so much more. Instead of saying that family values are important, or that Americans want more family values in their way of life, it should be noted that true family values come from actually placing value on families. This is something that was rooted deep in my mother's psyche. Something that she lived and breathed each day, not something that had to be reminded or legislated.

This is something that I have been learning more and more about her as I spoke to people in the family and to her friends and acquaintances. I always thought I knew what it meant to value your family; what it meant to keep a family together. But even today, my mom is still teaching me.

My family is kind of large, on my mom's side; all Irish Catholics. You know how it is. I was always asking my mom who someone was at a party or how someone else was related. Cousins, nephews, nieces, grand-uncles, etc, etc filled out the family gatherings. Now the job of keeping me up on who's who falls to my sisters, most notably my oldest, who somehow keeps track of it all. Just the other day my dad made reference to someone and I had to call my sister to find out who they were.

When my maternal grandmother was alive, she was always in the kitchen at such events. She brought in her three daughters, mom and my two aunts, to help out. After she passed, my sisters and two oldest female cousins, Linda and Susie, were brought into the kitchen.

"We bring our kids in now," Susie informed me once. "Guess it's a family tradition that keeps getting handed down, from one generation to the next."

Family values. The value of family. Mom taught us not so much in words, but in actions, what family means. It was stuff that she learned from her mom.

It might sound old fashioned that women do the kitchen work at such events. But the men in the family did just as much. They carried in the stuff, put everything where the women said it should go and helped with the picking up afterward. Feeling my modern post-ERA sensitivities rise (and spurred to action by my now ex-wife who thought it beneath her to do kitchen work), I once offered to help out in the kitchen. That offer was the last of such offers. I was promptly and efficiently 'shooed' out of the kitchen and told to leave it to those who knew what they were doing.

Now mind you, I am no slouch in the kitchen, having had to fend for myself for nearly ten years. I have a taste for the nicer things in the way of food and learned early to cook, lest I have to spend a fortune each day at restaurants so I could get decent lasagna or chicken cordon blue. I did once make the mistake of adding blueberries to an omelet I had already added garlic, salt and pepper to. If you have not had the experience to sample these tastes together, let me assure the dog wouldn't even eat it.

However, I digress. The point was not my experiences in my kitchen, but that of the kitchen at family gatherings. At home, you could find either of my parents making dinner on any given night. But here, in the context of a party or celebration or other event, it was the women who got together to get the food out. Yet it was more than just the food. It was the talking and sharing of everything from humor to serious issues.

I learned most of the points of my mom's lessons a tad late. I thought that it was about doing everything possible to 'stay together', that was the point of family. Even to the exclusion of yourself. After all, time and time again I would hear my mom get so mad at my father that she said she was done, that she couldn't take it anymore. Yet they stayed together, I had always assumed, because of us kids. And then after we left, I figured they just were too comfortable to split up.

Yet when I applied my understanding of 'family above all', I thought it meant not believing in divorce. This made for a very messy split when my ex-wife announced she wanted a divorce. I was floundering and adrift. I had nowhere to go.

No where, that is, except to the family that my ex had been determined to separate me from.

What she, and I, had missed from the lessons my mom showed by example, was that family meant much more than just staying together at all costs. It means more than just sending birthday cards on time and going to all the get togethers that a family as large as ours were bound to have (what with weddings and anniversaries and births and such).

Family means the offer of a place to stay, when needed, without judgment. It means traditions handed down from generation to generation, without any stigma of modern social attitudes. It means people doing for each other without expecting anything in return. Family means sharing good and bad times, offering both a hearty laugh and a shoulder as the need arises.

Do we get it perfect? No, of course not. We are, after all, only human. But mom did set a pretty high standard and some outstanding examples for us to follow in valuing family.

Recently, my dad was sitting at home and the phone rang. As usual, the answering machine picked up before he could get to it.

"Hi," came the soft, scratchy voice. "This is Helen. I'm calling for Sally. I need some help . . ."

My dad answered. He told me it was Helen Gallagher Walker. (Another name I had to ask my sisters about, since I didn't remember hearing it before.)

Dad explained to her that mom had passed some four months prior.

"Oh my," Helen replied. "I'm so sorry. I really miss her. She was always so good to me."

It seems that Helen Gallagher Walker is a relative somewhere on my maternal grandfather's side of the family. She is about eighty years old. And my mom talked with her, and visited her, often. Something I did not know. I am certain that somewhere along the line I had met Helen, most probably at my grandmother's eighty-fifth birthday party back in ninety-five, but I don't recall any mention of mom visiting her.

"I just don't know what to do, Charley," Helen explained. "My daughter gave me a cassette player and some books on tape. I put the tape in but it was in the middle. And my eyesight is so poor, I can't make out which button is the rewind button. So I knew if I called Sally, she would help me." A sigh and a pause. "I'm really going to miss her."

I still forget to send cards, but I do call on birthdays and anniversaries now.

It took me many years to 'get it', and only recently came to a better understanding. (Although, I don't profess a full understanding, I am still learning every day.) My folks stayed together not because of us kids, not because they 'didn't believe in divorce.' Nor did they stay together because of some fear of being alone or starting all over again. They stayed together because they made a commitment to each other. They still valued both the commitment and each other. And they actually worked at resolving problems. Did they have the perfect marriage? Probably not. Mom still shook her head at some of my dad's antics. But they loved each other. And, more importantly, they valued each other.