With the recent Thanksgiving feast behind us, the holiday season has begun with all the shopping, decorating, baking, parties, and family get-togethers we either look forward to with longing or with dread.
I hate the shopping, don’t mind the decorating and baking, and look forward always to having my family around me during the holidays. This year, unfortunately, my oldest daughter and her family in North Carolina did not come for Thanksgiving and will not be with us for Christmas. That makes me sad because I miss them, but she loves living in North Carolina so I’m glad she is happy.
Last year everyone was here for Christmas, and we spent the day at my daughter and son-in-law’s home in Danbury. Their daughter is now my youngest grandchild. It was great fun having my four grandsons visiting because I don’t get to see them very often, especially the oldest, who is now working in Baltimore.
I always get very sentimental at this time of year, remembering all the family parties my family shared through the years and the members of the family that made those holidays so special. Sadly, most of those people from past gatherings have passed away, and five years ago, with the death of my dad, I became something I had never been before.
I am now the oldest at the table during holiday dinners, and my granddaughter, at 6, is the youngest. As I said to my daughter, her mother, on Thanksgiving, there is no one in my immediate maternal family that remembers me as a child because I grew up in a family of adults.
Because we lived so close to my dad’s family on the Gurski farm and saw them so often, we spent most of the holidays with my mother’s family. My maternal grandmother had three children, but neither of my mother’s brothers had children, and I was an only child. Also, neither of my grandmother’s sisters had children and her brother only had one daughter, who married but never had children.
Oh, my mother had plenty of cousins on her father’s side, but they were mostly of her age. Her father had been one of nine children. While some of her cousins had children, they lived out of state, and we only saw them during family reunions or perhaps at weddings or funerals. Even at those gatherings, I was often the youngest there.
I don’t think I ever minded being the only child with all those adults, no matter where I was. I always felt loved, and there was always a willing adult to play croquet or badminton at picnics or to play board games or cards on Thanksgiving, Christmas or Easter. One great-uncle in particular always took the time to teach me a new card or board game. He also was a great storyteller and would entertain me with tales about what it was like when he was young. He is probably one of the reasons I was always interested in family history.
One of our family traditions on Thanksgiving at my great-aunt’s on Candlewood Lake was to take a long walk after the noon meal. We would walk out Old Turnpike Road to Candlewood Lake Road and back. Then we would play cards or some board game until it was time to get ready for a light supper. I know I was never bored despite the fact that there were no other children present.
So I never regretted being an only child with all those adults. It wasn’t until my first child was born that I ceased being the youngest at the table during holiday dinners and other festivities. But even then I was far from the oldest.
My two great-aunts lived to be 93, outliving their husbands who had lived into their eighties, so there was a long period of time when I was still one of the youngest at the table.
I have to admit I didn’t think about being the oldest until the first holiday after my dad’s passing. As a family friend said at the time, I was now the matriarch of the family, a role I had once bestowed secretly on one of the great-aunts who was then the oldest in my immediate family. Having that word used to describe me gave me pause.
A dictionary defines matriarch as a woman who rules a family, clan, or group. It doesn’t quite fit how I see myself in the scheme of things in my family relationships. As I ponder the word “matriarch,” I wonder how my children and grandchildren would describe me. Certainly not, I believe, as a woman who rules her family but as their mother and grandmother.
