The Mystery of Family

I've been thinking about family, and particularly about the mystery of becoming one flesh. I don't know any other way to explain the persistent belief we (as the human race) have in a generations-deep, ingrained family identity.

"In our family, we do _______."
"That's not the _______ way."

Maybe it makes sense within a race, a culture, a tribe, to speak with some confidence of "our traditions." But why, in a family, can we say, for example, "This is what it means to be Johnsons... this is what is important to the Johnsons. This is what the Johnsons are like"? When every generation, just about every Johnson is going to marry someone who is not a Johnson and have children who are, biologically, only half Johnson?

Unless you are marrying cousins (which still happens in more than a few cultures) every generation is a new mix of blood, name, tradition, identity. How can Johnson-ness persist and endure? Or is it just something people like to believe in and project in spite of the evidence?

I recently read a book in which one of the characters lost his wife and is trying to figure out how to go on. She had liked to think her ancestors were watching over her and cheering her on, and he wishes that in the same way she too were with him, but of course she's not his ancestor:

"They weren't even related. But he kept forgetting that. He thought of the medical consultation where, briefly, a doctor had mentioned a bone-marrow transplant. 'She can have my marrow!' Dave had said, and only at the doctor's quizzical glance had he realized his mistake." (Digging to America, p. 127)

Then, of course, the one-flesh thing can be broken at will; what seems so strong is actually also quite vulnerable.

I look at the pictures I have in my living room and see it.

There's one my Grandma Smith and her siblings; it's a beautiful photograph. They are all gone now but for years they were among the most important people in each other's lives and probably identities as well, even though they married, changed their names, what have you: still Jacksons and always would be.

Next to that is a photo from the 1970s with my sister and I and our parents. I keep it out largely because it's a visually interesting photograph; it's a good picture. Meg and I were no more than six years old when it was taken. I remember the day. We'd all been arguing, and you can kind of see it in the picture. We're out in the woods. I am leaning against a tree and have a sulky, angry look on my face. Meg is looking down. Mom and Dad, sitting together on a log, are smiling but not touching, and you'd think they would be. I didn't notice any of this, not really, until my stepmother saw the picture in my house and commented on it. She's a therapist.

Fast forward a decade and a half or so, and there are two more pictures: one of my mom and stepdad, one of my dad and stepmom. So: the one flesh thing, the Smith family or whatever, it was broken, and everybody started over with different people. Now who is family? What does it mean to be a Smith?

Or is that even a meaningful cover term?

I don't feel sorry about this, not really: we have gone our own directions and found situations that are probably a lot more conducive to happiness. Even if none of us had turned away from each other, things would still change, because that's the way things happen, every single generation. A man leaves his parents and joins with his wife and the two become one flesh.

New.