Keeper of the Clan

Yay, I finally finished my Christmas cards. It took me three full evenings to get it all printed (there were only 30!) but they're done. I don't remember it taking me this long last year. I should probably trim my list again, but this is the short list. Somehow I have become the Keeper of the Clan. The Historian, the Family Tie. I keep all the photo albums, I record the funny stories, I maintain and research the family tree and I make sure all the extended family get Christmas cards. Angel sends out cards too, but somehow I still feel like it's my responsibility to be sure we all somehow stay connected.

No one gave me the job and it wasn't one I volunteered for, it just kind of fell to me. I was the one most interested in the history. When I was 8, I found all our empty albums (the ones my parents kept intending to fill) and filled them up with the pictures dumped in boxes. There were a LOT of them. But it was so much fun. After that the job just stuck. As I found myself getting more and more interested in photography and genealogy, the other duties naturally found there way to me. I'm not complaining either, I enjoy it, but it amazes me how much it defines who I am in my family. (At least my view of me in my family.) If I forget someone on the Christmas list, wow, I feel so guilty! SO, I'm hoping I remembered everybody this year.

It's funny how "family" is important to all my family members, but they all define themselves and their part in it, in a different way. If you ask them, they'll tell you, Aprils the one that keeps the pictures. April knows about the family tree, ask her. But Angel, for example, she's the Manager. She's bossy, not in an overbearing way, at least not since I was a kid. :) She's the one that always seems to have the answers. The right way of doing things, the common sense. She jokes that if we were Elinore and Marianne in Sense and Sensibility, she would be Elinore with the common sense and practicality and I would be Marianne, nothing but romance and feeling. Kind of like two sides of a coin.

I suppose as the youngest, it's a good thing that I'm the Keeper of the Clan. I have longer to find someone else who's interested enough in it to pass it on. How sad is that? My Granny is in her 80's and I'm still trying to glean as much family info as I can from her, but it could be lost soon. How tragic would it be not to have someone in the next generation who cared about this stuff? Ideally, I'd like to pass it on to my own kids. But seeing as my chances for procreation are looking rather slim right now, I'm going to have to hope one of my nieces or nephews will do. But in the meantime, my closets just keep filling up with photo albums and scrap books, and next year, I'm sure I'll have more for my Christmas list. It's the way of life - it's the way of 'me'.

Scrap on,
A.