Family Gathering
Giftmas. A day of great hecticness. Much of the day will be spent in preparation, some for the morrow, but mostly for this afternoon when the family holiday gathering occurs.
A cold front moved into Nawth Alibam last night, so as I made the rounds of the bird and tree rat feeding stations this morning, the leaves papering the ground were iced with a bit of hoarfrost, adding a bit of a crack to the leaves’ crunch. As is often the situation here in winter, the early mornings are dead hushed, no wind, a virtual temperature inversion “elling” the smoke plumes from nearby chimneys.
Under such conditions, contemplation and meditation are natural, at least once one manages to overcome the reactive shuddering of muscles generating waste heat; ideas are calved that mature once inside and core temperature is restored. In the interim they sparkle and caper lightly in the mind like some concrete realization of particles in a transition state.
The subject that struck me this morning was the dynamics of these family gatherings, how they seemed like some vestige of the long history of humans before sedentaryness, when we existed simply as hunter-gatherers.
When I was a child, these gatherings were held at the homes of grandparents; the attendees three generations deep. Over time the youngest generation aged and began to bring significant others into the fold. Eventually, with the death of the last grandparent in our case, the gathering fractured. While we occasionally reconvened the group, now increasingly again three generations deep with the offspring of those who had been the youngest generation, the binding was not there, or, at least, it was not strong enough to bring us together for the holiday.
The current gathering is the descendent of those older ones. It too is three generations deep: my parents, my siblings, and our children. In the last couple of years, our children have been bringing others into the group, and two years ago my father passed. And herein lies the question to be considered.
Is there some special character to this thing of three generations? One hears of such gatherings of only two generations, or even four or five. The former are invariably the result of orphanage, family disruption, or just geographic dispersion. The latter are few in number, a small fraction of the total. So the mean depth of generations at these types of gatherings, which seem common to the Americans of the hinterland if not always of the cities – ghettos seem a notable exception? – is three.
The scientist that lies embedded throughout my mind asks what is the composition and nature of this? After all, that is what scientists want: understanding of observable reality. This is what sets us apart from engineers, who seem to want to make things work better; and consumers, who merely want things to work as they wish; and even nebishes who either do not wonder or accept unquestioningly and devotedly what they are told.
I have wondered if this is some form of optimal stopping, or perhaps just a simple Markov chain? Or perhaps some conservation law of intergenerational binding? Data is difficult to gather, except the accumulation of individual anecdote. Experimentation is essentially impossible, so one must make do with what is observed without any attempt to influence.
And thinking about this may get me past the hideous silences at these things when our differences at last exhaust our commonalities and conversation flags.
