My brother got married in June, and the reception gave me a glimpse of something I had never seen — my mom and her two brothers tearing up the dance floor together.
My siblings and I had seen my mom dance with one of my uncles before, but there aren’t many occasions in which all three of them get together. And even when they do, dancing isn’t part of the equation. So when all three of them were bobbing up and down together on that dance floor, the rest of the family noticed.
With our mouths and eyes wide open, many of us grabbed our phones to snap pictures of this fleeting moment before it was lost forever. We needed proof we weren’t all having a shared hallucination.
But thanks to our photos, we aren’t doubting our sanity.
And you know what else happened that night? There was laughter, so much laughter that my stomach still hurt the next morning. OK, that could have been from the wine they were liberally handing out there. But I like to think at least some of that next day stomachache was from how hard I was laughing.
All of my immediate family was there. We saw friends we haven’t seen in 10 or 15 years, a dear cousin we don’t see nearly enough, and we saw each other at our best moments – away from our worries, obligations and daily stresses. In short, it’s hard to see how a night is going to top that one for some time to come.
Now that it’s a couple days later and we’re back to our regular lives and my stomach has recovered, that night is still on my mind. The memories of it make me smile, but they also make me feel a bit sad. Why does it take a big occasion like a wedding or a holiday to come together and celebrate? Shouldn’t the fact that we’re all still here circling the sun together be enough reason to gather and throw a big party?
It should be, but apparently it isn’t. Because short of the big holidays, our family doesn’t gather together very often – at least not all of us. I know that with nine siblings, my family is bigger than most. It stands to reason the more members you have in a family, the more difficult it is to find a time and date for a gathering that works for everyone.
But I think we’re probably pretty typical of most families. I don’t know a lot of families who make a regular habit of getting together for no reason at all. In fact, only one comes to mind out of my circle of friends. That’s sad when you think about it.
I know that it’s hard to carve time out in our busy lives when we’re bogged down with work, stress and all the things we have to do from day to day.
But we waste a lot of time too, if we’re honest with ourselves. We spend a lot of time on Facebook, playing computer games, cyber surfing or watching television. While many of us need a little decompression time when we can zone out every day, we could cut that time in half.
Even if you waste an hour every day on meaningless filler activities like that, you’re throwing away seven hours of your time every week. If you took half of that time and planned a family get together on a Saturday or Sunday every week, think about how much happier you would be. If you don’t have family that you’d like to connect with, you could make the party for your honorary family – the close friends you consider your true family.
Even if you can only swing planning a get together once a month, that’s probably still better than you’re currently doing.
I’ve decided to try to cut down on how much time I spend on activities that don’t enrich my bank account or my life, so I can plan more frequent gatherings for my family.
I am the first to admit with my unstructured schedule, I’m terrible at staying focused sometimes. I can get sucked into the silliest of online articles when I’m doing research for a story. A headline grabs my attention, and 20 minutes later, I’ve been suckered into reading several articles I didn’t have time for to begin with.
I’m going to attempt to avoid most of those time wasters for a week or two, so I can find extra time in the day to plan a monthly get together at my house. To save even more time, I’m going to make the parties potluck style, so that I won’t need to spend a whole day cleaning and cooking for my informal gatherings.
The most important thing is that we’ll be spending time together. Because the next day, we won’t be regretting our lost Facebook time – we’ll be too busy laughing over the memories we made.
Shannon Serpette is a freelance writer and a mom of two who lives in Henry. She can be reached at
writerslifeforme@gmail.com.