FAMILIES

Connie and I recently attended a family party at my daughter Diane’s home in Westchester County.  She and Ronnie, gracious hosts as always, called her grown offspring to greet us. Two of them with their spouses presented their kids to me, my four great grandsons! The boys regarded me with a lack of interest and promptly ran off to play, leaving me to calculate that I was responsible for a family of 20 souls including six spouses.

I suppose the family first appeared among early humans when a few of them banded together for protection and support. In later eras, love and affection also became motives.

Admiral Richard E. Byrd had lots of time to think about his family while he spent many months alone beneath the Antarctic ice with only a radio for company. In his memoir Alone, he wrote:

At the end only two things really matter to a man, regardless of who he is; and they are the affection and understanding of his family. Anything and everything else he creates are insubstantial; they are ships given over to the mercy of the winds and tides of prejudice. But the family is an everlasting anchorage, a quiet harbor where a man’s ships can be left to swing to the moorings of pride and loyalty.

I wonder if the family will continue to exist in the distant future. Nevertheless, I expect that my family will continue to grow and I hope, to prosper. (I quoted Admiral Byrd in my novel Incident in Geneva.)