Monday 6 July 2015

Generations

I've been thinking about a comment left by Red, from Hiawatha House about the generations being strung out when there are many siblings in a family.  My family is a great example of that. 

On my mother's side, my grandmother was the oldest child of the 10 children in her family and my mother was her oldest child.  I also was the oldest of my family and there were 12 of us.  My father, on other hand was the third youngest of the 14 children in his family.  So that made my father a year older than my maternal grandmother's youngest brother and my maternal great-grandmother much the same age as my paternal grandmother.  I had second cousins on once side who were my age and younger and cousins on the other who were much older. 

Think that is confusing?  It doesn't stop there.  My first son is 6 days older than my youngest sister, his aunt.

I hear of families that fall out and give thanks that has never happened with any of my siblings.  You learn to bite your tongue at a young age when you are raised with a strict disciplinarian father.  And it doesn't do you any harm.  Sure, there is a sister-in-law I wouldn't mind swapping but the brother is happy and that's more important than my hackles.  But I also have sisters-in-law who I adore and hold close to my heart.

I'm so looking forward to my upcoming holiday in the UK and Europe and spending time with my brother, Peter and one of those sisters-in-law that I cherish, Pommie Jude.  See, there are so many of us names are bound to double up sooner or later.  So the two Judy sisters-in-law are Aussie Jude and Pommie Jude.  And I love them both.

This is five years old now but is still one of my favourite different generations family photos.  My youngest brother's daughter, Merrin is holding my niece's little girl, Chloe.  I had to think about that for a minute.  

10 comments:

  1. I'm confused. Just as long as you know who is who.

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  2. I come from a big family as well, my dad has 6 siblings, so you can imagine the number of cousins just from that side :D

    Mersad
    Mersad Donko Photography

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  4. Families can be complicated, but as long as you all get along...

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  5. Fourteen kids? That's a major family. Some of the women in the old days had kids for more than twenty years so that skews things right away. There's lots of support in the large families even though there's the odd feud..

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  6. I can relate to this from the family tree of my paternal grandmother... Her oldest half-sister was 34 years older than her. Through my family history blog a few years ago I received an email from her grandson, 2nd cousin to me (who had just happened to stumble across my blog!) - but 22 years older than me, i.e. only a couple of years younger than my dad (was). (He was able to fill in a few gaps for me about my grandmother's other sisters too.)

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  7. I can't even begin to contemplate such a complicated set of relationships.

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  8. Hello Pauline,

    I can tell you have all your faculties if you can work this relative thing out! I love how you distinguish the difference between the Aussies and the Poms.

    Happy days.
    Bev.

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  9. Large families can become very confusing! I come from a family of 5 children, as does my husband. We are both the middle children and our youngest siblings were both adopted from the same babies home in the same year.
    Further back in our family tree, there are families with 8-10 children. Mum and I have been having a great time completing our family tree on Ancestry.com

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  10. How wonderful that all of you work to make things work out between you! It sounds like you could have a huge family reunion and it would be wild and confusing and wonderful.

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