It Doesn't Matter...
I was born into a large, Catholic farm family, one of eleven children. We are very blessed to all still be in this world with the exception of an older sister who died shortly after birth. Large families were common when I grew up and we (at least I, probably shouldn’t speak for everyone else) didn’t see anything unusual about the size of our family.
There were certainly disadvantages to having such a big family…..imagine shopping for groceries or school clothes, imagine living in a home with one bathroom, imagine how much laundry we had to do, imagine figuring out who had to be where, when and how, imagine keeping track of birthdays, imagine making sure the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and Santa all showed up when they were supposed to. Yikes!!!!! It’s exhausting just thinking about getting it all done let alone actually doing it.
To be fair, there is a flip side to the coin, one can come up with many advantages to having a lot of kids. We didn’t need anyone else to play baseball, (Jack’s famous line “you’re just trying to get me out” still makes me laugh). We always had someone to play with and someone else to blame if you got in trouble. We learned the value of many hands helping out either in the house or in the barn, insuring that the farm prospered so that we were always well fed and well dressed.
Was life perfect? Not by a long shot, but you grow up, move on, set aside the bad and remember the good. As I age, I realize more and more, the size of your family, along with a lot of other things, doesn’t matter. Families have disagreements followed by forgiveness, a support system that’s there when you need it and love, always love…k
March 10, 2015