Moody Monday: Strange Families

My parent's generation, and my generation are small.  

My mother was an only child, and her parents - well really her mother - put the dis in dysfunctional when it came to family relationships. For most of her adult life she refused to talk with most of her family and most of her husband's family and shunned anyone who did.  Old grudges and slights that lasted a lifetime.  (Forgive and move on, it is something you do for you, not for others.) 

My father had one sibling, a sister.  So I only had one Aunt and Uncle.  And they had one child, my one and only first cousin.  I have three siblings, only one has children, I have two nephews.  Kind of the short end of the family tree.  

Three of my four grandparents were from very large families, 10-20 siblings each. My father's mother had two brothers and a sister. My mother's family was complicated and I seldom met and never really got to know any of them (I am connected on FB with one member of my mother's extended family the daughter of a cousin on her mother's side, from one of the few siblings my grandmother would allow anyone to talk with.) My father's family moved 115 years ago, and scattered, as far as Idaho and Florida.  There were four uncles who moved to the Detroit area, only one of them had children. I am in sporadic contact with the family of one of my fathers cousins.  

My one and only first cousin is in the photo above.   The shirt, his wife bought for him.  Self awareness, truth in advertising.  They have no children.