Marriage and Family Paper (part 1)

I just finished my family genogram (and a ten-page paper explaining it) for my Marriage and Family class. For this assignment, I was to analyze my family not simply in a recollection of historical facts, but by a thorough analysis of dynamics and functioning that have been influenced by history. This weekend, I thought I'd post some generic excerpts that might encourage you to think through your own family and how it has shaped you as well.

Can you hear me when I sing?

You're the reason I sing

You're the reason why the opera's in me

–“Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own,” U2

The rock star Bono singing about opera is comparable to my writing about family – the basic subject matter is familiar and I “get” it (after all, music is music and family is family), but the experience can still be a very foreign one.

Another similarity: just as there is a profound operatic streak running through Bono because of his father’s life and music, there is also an opera – full of interesting characters, relationships, memories, and meanings – playing in and through my own life because of my family. The metaphor is appropriate, as music and story have always been the most interesting of subjects to me.

In considering this opera, I’m fascinated anew by the fact that what separates me from previous generations is simply one day passing after another, over and over again, until days become months, months years, years decades, decades centuries, and so on. Time is both a massive and miniscule gap across to transcend, as it is nothing more (or is it nothing less?) than an enormous accumulation of the minutes of our very existence.

As time so accumulates, so, too, does my family – not just physically, but also emotionally, relationally, and spiritually – by the addition (and the multiplication) of each generation’s endowment to its lines. In our case, this has been (for the most part) for the good; at times for the not-so-good; and, perhaps most accurately, a little of both.