Last weekend, our family gathered in Stone Mountain, Georgia, to celebrate my parents’ 60^th wedding anniversary.  I must hasten to add, my folks are still relatively young—they married right out of high school, had me by age twenty, and the avalanche of four kids and their spouses, twelve grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren, along with spouses, dogs, cats, and horses.  We spent the weekend sharing a Holiday Inn Express breakfast area and their home—telling stories, laughing late into the night, and torrid games of Uno at the hotel with three of our aunts who came to help and their spouses.

I was humbled as I listened to my elders tell stories about us, realizing how large the protective covering of love was for us.  My Dad was one of nine, my mother one of eight, and one who died at birth.  A large family is chaotic sometime, but as my Aunt Johnnie philosophically puts it, “Oh, we argue and fuss and get mad but we always keep getting together.”

We have known our share of heartbreaks, losses, tragedies and struggles, all of us.  But we keep getting together.  There is something astounding about families, something enduring, durable, that transcends politics and economics.  Dirt poor was always not as poor as the people down the road, and besides, “we always had each other and enough to eat.  So we didn’t think we were poor.”  That despite clothes made out of anything mothers could find and food they grew themselves. Continue reading “Keeping Children Safe in a Dangerous World”