On being thankful

More than anything, I am thankful for my family. When I say this, of course I mean my children, my parents, my step mother, my brother, and all my aunts and uncles and cousins. All of the people that make up what are considered family to me. But usually when I refer to “my family,” I’m meaning my cousins on my dad’s side, the nine children who were born to my fathers’ brother, John, and his wife Patsy. The people who now make up such a large part of my daily life.

I grew up with them. As a child, they would wrap me in a blanket and two of them would swing me. They played “ghost in the graveyard” and tag and told me stories. I watched them play in every sport imaginable. We were together on holidays and camping trips and countless weekends. And they were my favorite place to be, always. I felt happy and lighthearted and safe with them. I felt home, and by the time I was old enough, I started spending extended time in Beaver Dam with them. By the time I started to drive, I chose to spend much of my free time with them, doing whatever they were doing at the time. Just enjoying them. Whatever bond or closeness I felt with them, they always reciprocated. I think I was eight or nine years old when my cousin Greg told me that I was his favorite cousin. We both have a lot of cousins, and even at that age I knew this was an honor. He told me that I was like a little adult and we just got each other. I remember thinking “Yes, we do get each other.”

I left an amazing mountain life in Colorado and returned to Wisconsin so that my children could be raised within the safety of this family, so that they could come to see and know this unconditional love that I was raised with and that has been such a pivotal part in making me who I am. My daughters have blossomed in the richness of this love.

It’s been suggested that our family may in fact be “unhealthily close,” as we are so enmeshed into each others lives. Nearly anything is suitable for open discussion at the dinner table, and while this is sometimes uncomfortable, this closeness and communication comes with a moral compass that breeds accountability. We don’t have to agree, but seeds get planted, and we love and support each other regardless.

The oldest of my nine cousins is named John after his father, and was nicknamed Butch. Everyone in my family gets a “y” sound added to their name at birth which remains regardless of education, age or station in life, so he’s Butchy, even now that he’s a grandpa. Greg is Greggi. Joe is Joey. I’m Shelly. My little brother, who has his Masters degree, is still Marky. This just is how it is.

Butchy is my godfather. He graduated high school on the day I was born, was married shortly after and his oldest daughter Jen is just a few years younger than me, so we grew up as playmates. Butchy is the patriarch and leader of the family now, since his father and his mother passed away in 1994 and 1995. It’s a large brood to lead, but he’s taken it on with a strength, maturity and poise that he seemed to always have possessed instinctively. I go to him for advice on big and small questions in my life, because he always makes me look at things in a way that I would’ve have otherwise. He is one of the wisest people I know, and he provides something of a fatherly/ big brother/ friend role that I never forget to be thankful for.

My family probably isn’t like most families. First of all, there are so many of us that any sort of gathering always resembles an invasion. Second, we aren’t small. Genetics always plays some part, and our particular family has a predisposition to obesity. I never give it much thought, not when I was young and not now. One of the best life lessons that I’ve learned from them is that appearance doesn’t mean a thing. They are the kindest, funniest, and most loving people that I know. They show who they are with their selflessness and their moral convictions by living their lives well. They taught me that beauty, which fades and is fleeting, doesn’t matter to begin with. They taught me by how they live their lives that it’s what’s on the inside that counts. I know that it’s because of them that I don’t look at people the way most of the world does. Physical beauty doesn’t mean anything to me. I fall for honesty, kindness and sweetness, in friendship and in love. Because those things always matter.

Two of my cousins from this family are gone, both Paulie and Frankie leaving us too young due to heart problems. Paulie passed in the early 90’s before even his parents, at 34 years old, and Frankie just five years ago at 45… I wouldn’t say that the void will ever disappear, but it seems to me that it takes up less space now. Maybe it’s that we continue to fill it up with new members of our family.

So for our Thanksgiving, we cram into my cousin Diane’s house in Milwaukee, a tradition for over a dozen years. We have “cuddle puddles,” which refer to all of us cramming into small spaces together. Part of this is necessity, because there are so many people and only limited space, but even when we have room to stretch out, we’ll all still squeeze onto the same couch together on purpose. It’s funny, because I don’t even like movie theatres due to the inevitable close proximity to strangers, but I will press into a tiny spot with my cousins, and feel at home. We all like our cuddle puddles.

The girls and I head to Diane’s house early to help her prepare the imposing amounts of food it takes to feed so many for one meal. Anyone who does this gets named her “kitchen bitch” and there is a general good-natured jealousy about who is and has been the best kitchen bitch. But I’m not particularly competitive, I just come early to have more time with my family. Georgia and Holly clear things in the garage to make space for serving later, they decorate the tables and get to work peeling mounds of potatoes.

I’m tired this Thanksgiving. Two days earlier, I had to go to the doctor for some strange vague symptoms that turned out to be a nasty bladder infection. I curl up on a small love seat in the midst of the cooking and organizing, thinking I’ll feel better if I rest for a bit. Diane takes a moment out from of her monstrous job to gather a pillow and a blanket for me. Without a word, she lifts my head and tucks the pillow beneath me, and lays the handmade afghan over my curled up body. Without meaning to, this simple act reminds me of her mother, but also of Diane herself. I feel bathed in safety and love in a way that money could never buy. She makes me feel precious and cared for like a child, magically without saying a single word, and then just gets back to her daunting task.

Dinner varies from someone yelling “Dennis! The gravy is not a beverage!” and meaning it, to being tucked in so tightly at table that no one can get up to reach the rolls on the far table, and the solution being to throw rolls across the room to every person who wants one. Yelling is fine, even encouraged, because it’s always for fun. I almost never hear anyone in my family yell out of anger, it just isn’t our way. Plus, we seem to live by the philosophy that almost everything is funny eventually, and that laughing makes life way more fun.

The youngest of my nine cousins is Joey. He’s just over 4 years older than me, and his son Willie and my daughter Georgia are 8th graders at the same middle school. Georgia and Willie are wrestling after dinner, running around playfully beating each other their own shoes. They chase circles around a table, each hopping on one foot because the other foot is bare. When Joey asks why they do this, Georgia tries to tell us but is laughing too hard to make any sense, and has to keep her attention on her elusive cousin Willie. They remind me of myself and Joey when we were young, tormenting each other in the name of fun. I silently pray that they will be this to each other forever, like how I’ve always had Joey.

Holly and Georgia play with Jen’s three year old daughter Nora, the baby of the family. It reminds me of myself playing with Butchy’s youngest daughter Nellie when she was small, although she is now married and has already done a tour of duty in Kuwait. A stream of family members hoist my tiny eleven year old around, jokingly locking her out of the garage, or dumping her into a cuddle puddle across the house. It reminds me of my cousin Chrissy putting me onto her back when I was little, taking me for a brief ride down the stairs, a quick and efficient show of affection before she headed out to one of her many softball games.

Our lives are such a circle, especially if we choose to stay within it and watch it grow and change.

A tradition for Thanksgiving is standing in a circle in the garage (which is where we serve the food because the whole house is taken up by the seats needed for 40 people.) We all join hands and Butchy leads us in a prayer. I’m very spiritual, though not religious in any organized sense, but I love this tradition. Some years we go around and say what we are each thankful for, but some years we are just blessed with too many at dinner and we merely stick with Butchy’s words. It’s one of those years.



This year, Butchy talks about how special it is that we all still join together on this day. He says that he thinks it would make his parents proud, and their parents, and their parents before them. That this is where we come from, and why we’re all here. I think of my aunt Patsy and Uncle John, who I loved almost like grandparents and still miss, and I have to bite my bottom lip to hold back tears. I can feel how proud they are of our group, who don’t just gather for one or two days, but are in each others lives so closely all year. I feel them as if they are there holding my hands.

Butchy reminds us that this is rare, that we should be thankful for the type of family that we have. And he says that we should “Give it back. Pass it on to the kids, and keep it going…” I looked around at all of these people who I know and love so well, gathered here because we are so thankful for each other. I look to my right and I think that my cousin Frankie is still with us in some ways, as his youngest son Mark, whose hand I hold in mine. I looked down to my left at my daughter Holly, who is already looking up at me with green eyes so much like my own. She squeezes my hand tighter and I pull it to my abdomen and clutch it to me. And I pass it on.