Peace and Quiet v. family commotion

The first thing I want today’s blog to say is Happy Birthday. My cousin, with whom I grew up, and with whom I have shared many many birthday celebrations, is having a birthday today. We couldn’t be together yesterday as we planned, because it just didn’t work out, but tonight, I think that I will raise a cupcake to my cousin’s birthday, right after I call her to wish her a very Happy Birthday. Since I was planning to write about family commotion today, certainly birthdays can qualify. In my very early life, I lived in a multigenerational household, the youngest of four children there, and enjoyed the commotion that accompanied a group of nine people, speaking two languages, an autocratic patriarch who I adored, a sweet, smiling, but sickly grandmother, two sisters sharing the chores of a large household with an invalid, and none of the labor saving devices that we take for granted today. We children couldn’t be parked in front of the TV to keep the noise down, because there was no TV. We played outside until dark, all up and down the street with the other children on the street. We climbed trees, dug in the yard and buried treasure, played hid and seek, and busied ourselves. There were no lessons, or organized classes, or after school activities. The older kids walked to and from school together, unsupervised, while I waited at the front window for them. I can’t speak for everyone, but I remember that part of my childhood as very happy. In the evening, we sat around the console radio that was four feet high and three feet wide, and glowed green from the display dial with it was on, and listened to serialized stories, like The Shadow. Mom and Aunt couldn’t cook meals ahead or take frozen veggies from the freezer, because the freezer was about half the size of a breadbox, and held only a couple of ice cube trays. We had to eat in shifts because there wasn’t enough room at the table for all of us at one time. If we were lucky enough to have a couple of bottle of soda as a rare treat, there was endless negotiation over who would share—two to a bottle. Cooking for upcoming holidays was a whirlwind of activity, and we kids were smart enough to stay out of the way. A tiny house, probably half the size of my present home or less, housing nine people of three different nuclear families, one bathroom, close quarters at best, yet always a place of welcome to visitors. Today I wonder, I analyze, I question “how did they manage?” It was lively in the best sense of the word: full of life. We had no pets, there was little money, and certainly none to spare, but the values of family allegiance, closeness, love and loyalty, adherence to a belief system and the passing on of a shared and loved history were all there in that tiny house. My parents, brother and I all shared one bedroom that we slept in, but there I learned the value of privacy, and the fun of sharing a small space. I remarked to someone this week, that the first time I had my own room was when my brother moved away to go to med school. And I realized that the love and closeness that we shared all our lives came from the experience of sharing, that necessity forced on us. My fondest memories of my brother teaching me to tell time (on an analog clock), of listening together to the Sunday morning broadcast of the “funnies” on the radio, of playing “Mother, May I?” in the concrete backyard nest door with the neighborhood kids. I didn’t learn ‘peace and quiet’ that I value today in those walls, but I learned the valuable lessons that family commotion were so good at teaching. Happy Birthday L.