family evolution – The view from the edge of our empty nest.

A Family Tree Worthy Of The Love We Put Into It

“The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life.”
RICHARD DAVID BACH

I am about to become a grandmother to a child with whom I share absolutely no DNA. As much as I have been interested in the cultural, ethnic, and genealogical lineage of who has come before me in my family tree, and I sometimes dream of what my children’s, children’s, children may be like, the lack of genetic connection I have to this little girl is absolutely irrelevant to me. She is my granddaughter. I am her grandmother. We are family. We haven’t even met.

Many little girls dream of the person they will marry and the family they will have, and I was no different. I always imagined creating a family of my own, beyond my parents and siblings. I saw a spouse. By the time I met my future spouse, I saw children. It all mattered a great deal to me.

But what I learned over many years, was that the WAY I would grow my family wouldn’t matter AT ALL. NOT. ONE. BIT. In reality, my family goes far beyond the little world I imagined as a child.

Each of us has a family tree that grows out of a lifelong series of our choices and from what happens to us. Its expansive branches are spread in varying and unexpected directions because of what may have seemed like chance, but in retrospect was perhaps fate. It sways and takes turns over time, the result of ever-changing relationships and friendships. A branch or entire span of the family tree is sometimes dramatically altered by marriages, divorces, and deaths.

Because of the imperfections and difficulties of life, family trees are sometimes ravaged, as if they were in a storm that left them damaged and broken. During these adversities, families must forever be changing and evolving as life unfolds. As with nature, our family tree can recover from the harshness of life, and grow stronger, wider, and taller as a result of the work we do to keep our families strong.

My family tree hasn’t been all that I thought it would be, but it certainly has become what I needed, what God planned for me, and it has enriched my life in unexpected ways. We continue to learn and grow, heal from damage and losses, and build up stronger. I’ve learned that my family is most successful and happy when each individual is actively nurturing their own personal healthy growth and together we build resilience that helps us all weather the difficulties that must be faced.

We must all actively nurture the growth our ourselves and our family.

Following a childhood as part of a loving family, teenage years filled with laughter, insecurity, and a broken heart, and some painful relationships and life lessons learned in my early twenties, the family that I imagined for my future was planned to include a husband and five children. Yes, my picket fence vision included a clapboard farmhouse with a wrap-around porch and carefully placed steps taken in my life that would help me avoid disappointment and pain, and would include a busy house full of happiness. The homestead would be a decades-long home base for our children, their friends, and eventually, our grandchildren. So much for “family planning” – my young sapling of a family tree was going to grow much differently than I had imagined.

“Together in our house, in the firelight, we are the world made small.”
Jennifer Donnelly

With my future husband and life partner found sooner than expected at age 22, we married and became a family when I was 26. It was early in our marriage that we experienced infertility and the first, painful splinter in our new family tree. We were faced with having very real conversations about remaining childless, adoption, fostering, and the rigors of infertility treatments. This was when I discovered that my husband didn’t want to pursue foster care or adoption, options of family-building that I had always been interested in but had perhaps been too quiet about sharing my thoughts on. It was a frightening time in our lives when these issues were rarely discussed and there was little guidance or professional support.

We made sacrifices and difficult decisions, and over the first ten years of our marriage, we grew a family that included the two of us, the birth of three children, and the adoption of a dog and a cat! It was not quite what either of us had envisioned but the experience taught us that our family is always changing and never quite “complete”.

Over the next ten years, the family tree we were growing changed in unique ways. Early on, we experienced new relationships with children through the Big Brothers/Big Sisters programs. It opened our hearts to other ways to welcome children into our family life. We added to our clan with the summer-long hosting of an international orphan whom we helped find a forever family through adoption. We also hosted three international students, from Mexico and Spain, each for a school year. These experiences taught us how enriched a family can be by welcoming unexpected or less traditional members to our family, even if it was only for a season of life.

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Over decades we rescued more pets that needed families, each with its own unique needs and differences. Some of our pets remained in our family for many years, and others were fleeting. Each pet family member taught us that we have much to give to others in need, but that the love that is returned can be immeasurable and unceasing.

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Among our extended family, there are longtime members welcomed through adoption that occurred in a time and place where this form of “family building” was done quietly and seldom discussed. By the time our children arrived, it had been a part of the fabric of our extended family, and so our young children thought nothing of it, perhaps not even being aware of it. It was a matter-of-fact existence that beautifully eroded any ideas about what a family must look like. With each addition to our widening branches, our family tree grew stronger roots and more lovely with each passing year.

“Take away all our possessions, and we are left with one structure held together by love: family.”
ANONYMOUS

As life is known to be difficult, there were divorces, deaths, and remarriages along the way that caused the growth of new branches in our family tree and further blended what our family looked like. It was many, many years before my children even understood that their paternal grandfather was technically their “step-grandfather”, as my husband’s parents were long divorced, his mother, long remarried, and his father, deceased years before we ever married.

“Pop and Nana love us” was all the children cared to know.

“Pop” loved all of his grandchildren immeasurably, and they felt that love. He had never had any biological children, yet enjoyed the gift of grandparenting without any worry about the history of life and how he arrived into this important role. All five of his grandchildren benefitted greatly from this little twist in our family tree branch – and it secretly taught me important future lessons for my life to come.

Friendship sometimes leads to so much more. In this case, Godparent – and forever part of our family, come what may.

Expanding our inner family circle, there were “Uncle Jerry” and “Uncle John” who were two members related to us only through the lifelong friendships formed between their dad and his best friends. “Uncle Jerry also became a Godparent to our son, adding another layer to the importance of the connection and the love that is shared between family members. It was many years into their childhoods before any of them asked us one day – “How is Uncle Jerry our uncle, actually”? This innocence of acceptance into our family was an important personification of the expansive definition of family.

Sometimes family can even be born of a help wanted advertisement in the newspaper. We think of it as a real God-moment.

Still, other family members spring up from quite unexpected places. In our family’s experience, the hiring of a part-time nanny turned into such a special relationship, that “our Bonnie” became a Godparent to our youngest child, a bonus mother to me, and her family tree branches became lovingly entangled with ours, celebrating shared holidays, attending birthday parties and visiting each other long after decades and miles had separated us.

These are perhaps the best examples of how we are fated to be in certain people’s lives, and making them a part of each other’s families is a blessed gift that enriches all of our lives.

Our family was most significantly and forcibly changed upon the death of my husband. That one tragic and sudden loss ended a marriage, broke innumerable hearts, and in many ways, tore away our community, our friends, and half of our family. Some of the changes were permanent, and some were temporary, but not one family relationship was left untouched, unharmed. This experience was a lesson in the more painful part of how Mother Nature can alter the very roots of a family tree as it grows, bringing it to the brink of death.

During those most difficult years, the changes we faced were seemingly relentless as I held my core family – my three children – as close as our broken hearts could muster. We struggled individually and collectively. We moved back to my home state. I changed my work more than once. The kids changed schools more than once. We all lost and made friends. We just held on tight for about ten years before the dust seemed to slowly settle on our family.

It was during this time, after 4½ years of parenting on my own, I remarried and immediately faced building up another significant change – adding a loving husband, three “bonus” children, and an entirely new set of in-laws, relatives, and friends to my storm-ravaged family tree.

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Mom and my future FIL #2
The Holmstrom family grows by one…
International family…
The neighborhood family – Holmstrom – Dottavio – Price – Piscitelli and more…
The family members I will likely love the longest…
My future 2nd FIL and my beloved Aunt Mimi
Family lost and loved
Family friendships of the past become my family of the future
Best friends make great family
Auntie love
Luke 12:34 – For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.re
Cousin love
Before the storm…
Holding on tight through the hardest years…
Welcoming new cousins
“Love is the way back into Eden. It is the way back to life.” ― Francine Rivers
Life Part 2 begins and the family tree spans generations
Brady bunch – not! But still pretty awesome.
In-law family – Life part 2
Family evolution
Amazing bonus kids
Sharing our lives and loves
Celebrating with new family members members
Best girlfriend (AKA sister) and best boy (AKA Lorne)
Cousin and sibling love across the century!

So here I am, 56 years into my family life. I am a member of the Holmstrom-Zanis-Schmidt family, which is a part of the larger and ever-changing Heming-Mitchell-Pillo-Fyhr-Fischer-Magee-Tress families. At times, we sprinkled in many others – some Piscitelli-Simmons-Wajert-Fernandez-Peniche-Tepe-Leonard-Lazovi-Spieles-Rohlfs members among them. Top it all off with love, caring, and years of relationships that are coming, growing, and going, and we end up with a family tree that has survived and thrived through the best and worst that life throws at us.

Love can bring us back to a family position of strength, beauty and happiness.

How it looks doesn’t matter. How you name it doesn’t matter. Even the duration of their stay in our family doesn’t matter. Certainly, the DNA doesn’t matter. Some we inherit, some we choose, and some we are fated to enjoin. Ultimately, how we got here doesn’t matter. All that matters is the work we put into our family tree every day. It is our effort, the love and care we share. We must nurture our tree with water and sun over time and it will grow larger and stronger and more beautifully rich.

May my granddaughter, the daughter of my oldest bonus daughter and son-in-love, and all grandchildren that I may be blessed with beyond today, know the tremendous love of their family. May they feel welcomed and wanted unconditionally throughout their lives, as their own family tree grows from the humble origins of their parents. May they learn that family is certainly what you are given at birth and grows imperfectly as life unfolds, but that what matters most is the love within. I love my family tree and welcome the gift of my new granddaughter to sit and nest among its branches.

A happy family is but an earlier heaven.
George Bernard Shaw

Safe travels, and go hug a (family) tree!

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How Covid and FT RVing Showed Us New Ways To Share The Love

In my family of origin, there were a lot of little details that were “traditions” we cherished during holidays throughout the year. At Easter, we Holmstrom’s took the obligatory photos dressed in our Sunday finest and with our baskets at our feet. At Thanksgiving, the dressing and sauerkraut played just as important a role as the turkey. Finally, Christmas morning gift opening always began with all four of us kids piled in our parent’s king-sized bed, digging through the stockings that Santa left before we explored what he left under the tree. Much of the rest – the bigger components that fill in a holiday experience, would be altered a bit each year to meet changing family member’s needs – varying locations, attendees and menus. We treasured it all, but we weren’t very prone to consistency.

My brother, Steve and me, visiting Granny and Pop-pop (maternal grandparents) in Baltimore, MD in 1970.

Granny (Albertina Heming) and my mom (Diane) in 1968. That mid-century modern silver tree is a holiday detail that has survived and was used for many years through my own parent’s retirement.

My husband’s experience was a bit different. Many aspects of the holidays were a re-creation of the year prior – decorations, menu, guests and celebratory details were a great annual tradition. Change was eschewed, conceding to it only when absolutely necessary. The Schmidt family traditions run deep and long and are equally treasured.

*Every big holiday in the Schmidt family included a visit to Grammy’s house (and many times for my family as well, but that is a blog post for another day).* Here is Andrew at Grammy’s house for Christmas in 1967.

When Andrew and his brother started their own families, the tradition continued. Here is Abby (Andrew’s youngest), Grammy (his paternal grandmother), his neice Elia, and MomMom (his maternal grandmother), all dressed up for a Christmas visit.

As adults, we each continued our “holiday styles” in a similar manner, with my holidays moving with the ebb and flow of family member geography, the growing up of me and my three siblings, the loss of grandparents, the start of marriages and the birth of grandchildren. Andrew’s experience was a bit more steadfast and certain. Despite many of the same family changes over time, his family endeavored each year to keep every holiday the same at its’ core. Each style seemed to work for each of us….and then we got married! Cue the David Bowie music…”Cha-cha-cha-changes!”

When we married in 2015, holidays became a new conglomeration of step-siblings, new step-cousins, and a mix of guests that varied with each holiday and each year. With my family moving form PA to MD, and the sort-of blending of two households, the holiday table looked a little different each year. This photo shows the “kid table” at Thanksgiving, circa 2017.

We always tried to lasso a few of our kiddos each year to celebrate in different ways – this was the day in 2019 we got a small group of us together to pick our Christmas tree – with Ben (Andrew’s son), and Chris (Christy’s best guy).

So when we declared our full-time RVing plans and as Coronavirus descended upon our world, it quickly became apparent that our big holidays were going to be much different for a while. And so far, different they have been! Initially, I had one goal in mind – to make sure our kids all had a place to spend and enjoy each holiday no matter where we were in our RV.

We also intended to find enticing travel locations that might create a holiday option for any of our six children to visit if they wanted. Even though all our kids are now young adults, it was important to me that each of our kids had some holiday options. Despite all the intentions and planning, we realized much of it was beyond our control.

The inability to travel during a pandemic created a quiet heartache as treasured holiday time with our loved ones was relegated to texts, phone, and video calls. I have learned that Covid had a far greater impact on holidays than full-time RVing ever would. I expect to miss seeing most of my loved ones when I travel. But there is an added level of sadness when I know my stationary-living loved ones also cannot see and do most of the things they would like to do to celebrate.

These are the types of holidays that everyone around the world misses – a gathering of generations and households. This was Thanksgiving 2016, the last that we enjoyed celebrating with all of our parents. Fathers and fathers-in-law have since passed, placing another change upon us that we wish we didn’t have to face.

So as we wrap up a year of Covid holidays and six months of living on the road, I am grateful for whatever time I can get with my loved ones. Brief visits with Ella, my college-student-youngest did happen – masks on and hugs withheld, before she had to return to her new “school home” in Gainesville, FL to work her part-time job at Walmart. It has become clear that holiday familiarity is suspended for a while as everyone’s adult responsibilities, Coronavirus, and our geographic distance take their toll on our family, like so many others.

It was our thought that our other children and parents, all currently based out of Maryland and Pennsylvania, would have family members nearby to give them a “holiday home”. Unfortunately, with Covid, that couldn’t always happen. My two older kids both work every day in high-Covid-risk food service environments, so Covid really prevented them from being able to do much holiday visiting at all, in an effort to keep other more Covid-vulnerable relatives safe. Instead, my oldest, Adalie, delivered Thanksgiving dinner from her place of employment to her brother, Lorne, since they both worked through the extended Thanksgiving weekend. Lorne made a pumpkin pie and visited a local friend’s family. They had recently lost their son/brother and it was important to him to help fill their holiday with some happiness.

Andrew’s children each varied their own plans slightly, knowing that we could not all be together this year. Christy was moving into a new apartment and kept busy with her boyfriend and his family. Ben and Abby, still living at their mother’s home, had a place for a more traditional, albeit, smaller Thanksgiving.

Our mothers each had perhaps the most challenging Thanksgiving celebrations of all of us. My mom spent her first Thanksgiving as a widow, having just moved out of her home of 55 years – and into her own adorable in-law suite in my sister and brother-in-law’s home. My mother-in-law spent her first Thanksgiving ever without anyone else at the table. Our moms enjoyed meals provided by our siblings, but the holiday differences most certainly were the dominant theme. We all did our best exchanging calls, texts and special flower deliveries, but watching all these changes unfold was certainly the most difficult part of the holiday to navigate.

Easter 2020 was a Covid-bust – with a full lockdown and stay-at-home order in MD, so we were bound and determined to make Thanksgiving on the road special in whatever way we could. Here, Andrew and I walk the beach with Ella on Thanksgiving Day in Tybee Island, GA.

Our Thanksgiving had some really nice moments despite all the limitations. Andrew and Ella and I enjoyed a pot-luck meal hosted by the campground where we were staying, so I was able to cook our favorite dishes, without having the full load of a turkey and a dozen side dishes. We ate at a picnic table at our campsite, with a tablescape of seashells, pine cones and mini pumpkins. Instead of hosting 15 – 20 guests, our family-of-three walked off our meal on the beach of Tybee Island, GA on a warm afternoon, exchanging “Happy Thanksgiving” greetings with strangers instead of our parents and most of our children, all of whom we missed dearly.

A Thanksgiving 2020 freast for three- safely outdoors, with our feet in the sand, at Rivers End Campground, Tybee Island, GA

Where the Savannah River meets the Atlantic Ocean at sunset. Sometimes different can be great, and at the same time, you miss your people even more.

Christmas was a repeat of a similar scenario. We met Ella at a campground on the gulf panhandle in Carrabelle Beach, FL for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. It was a treat that included long walks on the pure white sand, collecting seashells and walking the dogs. I made many of Ella’s favorite meals and put all my “Mom efforts” into her, unable to host or dote on any other kids or parents. Facetime and Zoom meetings replaced a trip to someone’s house for a day-long visit. Gifts were mailed, with a hope, but little expectation that the USPS was going to deliver in time. It was quiet. It was relaxing. It was still lovely. But It was very, very different.

Christmas tree hunting was a trip to Goodwill, and decorating took only about an hour in our tiny RV home. But something about the twinkling lights helped give us the warmth of Christmas even when we missed nearly all of our loved ones.

Even a visit by one is better than a visit by none (she still needs to practice her mask-wearing as part of her adulting lessons). What we lacked in wrapping paper for gifts (as shown in photo), we made up for with shipping packages of love to those we missed.

I filled my 2020 “Mom-tank” by cooking special food for Ella and Andrew, and visiting with all of our kids on Facetime or Zoom on Christmas (this was a breakfast casserole).

By the time our second Covid-impacted Easter rolls around and we wrap up a year of traveling-holidays, I am not sure that much will be “back to normal”. We hope the Covid vaccine will be widely available by then so that flights can be booked and larger gatherings of loved ones from different households are once again safe. But if it isn’t, I know it will still be okay, despite the differences. The holidays have to change every year, but the core of every holiday will always be the same. These important days of the year are about sharing love, and we will all find new and different ways to share that love with those we love and miss.

Safe travels – and happy holidays all year-round, wherever you are planted!

The gallery of photos shared below is a walk down memory lane from the 1950s thru the present, showing how our families and our family traditions have evolved over the years. It is a digital family photo album of resilience and love.