Figuring out family relationships can be difficult.
When I was a child, we weren’t allowed to call adults by
their first names. I don’t know whether or not it was the same in other
households, but even my parents’ cousins could not be addressed by their first
names, except in the case of a couple of them who were teens when I was growing
up.
To complicate matters, there were neighbors who were
particularly close friends with my parents. Those people were also addressed as
“Aunt” and “Uncle”. Although I knew these people were not actually related to
me. In the neighborhood I had Aunt Gertrude and Uncle Ken, Aunt Florence and
Uncle Ralph, Aunt Francie and Uncle Frank and Aunt Peggy and Uncle Bob, in
addition to the usual Mr. and Mrs. by which we knew the rest of the neighbors.
For some reason, Aunt Florence and Uncle Ralph fluctuated
between that and Mr. and Mrs. C, where it stayed once I hit my teen
years. The same thing happened with Aunt Peggy and Uncle Bob. But the others
remained Aunt and Uncle until they died.
At my mother’s insistence, we called her cousins and my
dad’s by Aunt and Uncle, and although we knew they weren’t actually aunts and
uncles, it rendered our relationship to them a mystery.
My mother’s family wasn’t that difficult. Her mother had
died earlier in the year my parents were married, so we never knew her as a
grandmother, and my mother’s father died when my second oldest brother was 2,
so my eldest brother was the only one who ever knew him. She had an aunt and an
uncle that we knew (not married to each other, however), and only 5 cousins,
four of whom we seldom saw. So it wasn’t a grand stretch to call the one cousin
of my mother’s whom we did know Aunt,
although we knew both she and her daughter were actually cousins, just not like my other cousins
somehow.
My father’s family was a bit more difficult. He seemed
related to the entire Irish diaspora in America, owing to his mother’s brother
and four sisters and his father’s nine or so siblings who lived, even though
one was the requisite nun, and one other never married. So, there were those
aunts and uncles – real ones, albeit great (or is it grand?) aunts and uncles –
and their mostly adult children, whom we were required to refer to as “aunt”
and “uncle” even though in reality they were first cousins once removed (I am
quite conversant with the first, second and third cousin/once, twice and three
times removed differentiations, in case anyone ever needs that information).
Again, the exceptions were the teens. I
considered them my “extra” cousins: Eileen, Phyllis, and Kay. There were
others, but I didn’t know about them; and some of them I only met once I was an
adult. There were scads of them. But then, we were Irish Catholic, so…
And it is through my paternal grandfather that I’m related
to the actress Andrea McArdle. She is a second cousin.
Andrea played Annie on Broadway, and in the 1980s played
Judy Garland in a made-for-TV movie that I watched with some people who were
friends at the time. During the program, they remarked several times on her
resemblance to me. Personally, I don’t see it. Even when I met her when she was
in a play at the Bucks County Playhouse – my then reporter boyfriend (now IT
husband) interviewed her and then introduced us – I didn’t see any physical
resemblance. But we are both left-handed.
My father once told me about one of his cousins who studied
medicine in Mexico, and decided to stay there once he learned he’d have to do
some of his internships and residencies over again if he wanted to practice in
the US.
Said cousin apparently decided to visit the Philadelphia
cousins, but he took a rather long route to get there. He went up the West
Coast, diagonally across the country, and up the East Coast before arriving in
Philadelphia.
What was so amazing about the trip is that he stayed with a
different relative every night of his journey. My father didn’t doubt he could
do that; he simply wondered how he found them all.
Things have changed significantly since I was a child. Many
children seem to call adults who aren’t their parents by their first names. Our
friends refer to us to their children as Aunt and Uncle, but I’ve never
quibbled about what anyone called me, as long as it wasn’t obscene. I’ve never
felt like an adult, so it doesn’t bother me if children call me by my first
name. One or two of our neighbors have referred to me as Miss Cathy when
talking to their children or grandchildren, and I’m fine with that. Most people
only know me as Shadow’s mom (our dog).
The only time any children were required to call me Miss or
Mrs. was when I was teaching school or later, when I was an OT in the schools.
Beyond that, I’m on a first name basis with most people.
As an adult, I’ve met second and third cousins (and the
once-removeds) in the UK and Ireland. Since the majority of them are my peers
or younger, I’ve used first names. I
have met a parent or two of some of them. I’m not really sure what to call
them, since they’ve been introduced as “my mother,” or “my father”. I generally
have conversations and leave names out of it. I suppose at some point, if the
need arises, I’ll be directed to the proper thing to call them.
It’s a good thing that social greetings have loosened up. I
have 12 first cousins on my mother’s side (I had 17, but our generation has
reached that point, and cancer has taken others), and 18 first cousins on my
dad’s side. It’s also a good thing that I haven’t participated in the offspring
parade. I can’t imagine having to tell children that there are 30 people and
whatever spouses they might have at the moment, that they have to call Aunt or
Uncle in addition to their real aunts and uncles.
As a small child, I didn’t realize grandparents were
actually related to one parent or another, since I only had one set. I was
simply amazed that one of my friends had an extra grandmother! My mother
laughed when I referred to the woman that way, and explained how she was
related to my friend, and the reason I didn’t have any “extras”.
I can’t imagine what life is like with some children:
Parents who divorced and remarried, some who already had their own children,
the Exes of the adults, the children of those Exes, and so on. I can’t imagine
how they keep track. In some families, it’s more confusing than being related
to the entire Irish diaspora.
