In the Family Way

            My paternal grandfather produced three boys. Fertile seed for the next generation. Reasonable hopes that the family name would be carried on. 

            I, the first child of my father; the fifth granddaughter in line, became the wearing thin of that hope. “Put her back!!!” my grandfather cried. 

A boy. Someone to carry on the name. It was not to be. Six granddaughters, one born after his life was over, his time run out. 

The story is that after he met me, he was charmed anyway. He died when I was about two years old. But I remember sitting on his lap. He fed me Vienna sausages and smelled like cherry pipe tobacco. 

Our name, gone. Our line, dissipated. I produced no children. My only sister, one child. Our family has faded away. Maybe we deserved to fade; we weren’t that functional, anyway. 

Forty-one years after Grandad wanted to put me back, I married. Into a family with three boys. Different family name. Different family entirely. I was invited, but I didn’t belong there, not natively. Such is step-parenting. 

It’s hard. It’s hard to find your place with people who came from a different womb. Blood binds together, and you find yourself on the outside. I’ve often felt like I’m stuck in a sidecar of a family already in progress. Not a driver or navigator, not even one who understands the route. I’m just along for the ride, and God knows why.

My first family, faded. My second family, not mine. 

            But yesterday.

            Yesterday, for the first time in years, I found myself in the family way. 

            In a family.

Our two oldest moved out two years ago. The eldest, to his second home away from our home just two weeks ago. As we sat down to our first supper at his new place, I noticed some of the glasses on the table. “These look like some I used to have!” 

They were. 

I was surprised; I didn’t even remember having those glasses at the time I married their dad. But there they were. My things, giving refreshment to a younger generation. 

During the conversation, recollections of the second son. His unique and somewhat alarming eating habits. A particular stage of soda, chips… and Vienna sausages. Ugh! Who eats those, anyway? 

I confessed. Second son got it from me, a woman in culture shock, having moved into a family that was not hers. Eating Vienna sausages for comfort, the same kind of sausages she had gotten from her granddad when she was two years old. 

             My glasses, on the table. 

My grandfather in his step great-grandson. 

Three boys.

Different name. 

But my own family, continuing in the family way. 

And God knows why. 

            Grateful.